The Borgia Nun
by carriebess
Summary: At the end of her life the nun who was once Lucia Borgia recounts the story of her adventures, which took her far from the walls of a convent. A continuation of "The Pitfalls Service" series.
1. Chapter 1

Sister Maria Christina was roused from her evening prayers by the strident knocking of Sister Magdalena on her cell door. The infirmaress who waited impatiently was a thoroughly unpleasant woman who looked upon the sick and elderly with distaste and as her assistant it was often Sister Maria Christina's duty to attend to those who were soon to die. Sister Magdalena peered into the room as though expecting to see some impropriety. Finding none she pressed her lips together and said in her harsh voice, "Sister Maria Lucia has asked for someone to sit with her this night." Sister Maria nodded and followed her through the halls of the Convent of Corpus Domini.

The aged nun lay on her cot, protected from the chill of the evening by a thick wool blanket over the gray tunic and white scapular of her vocation. Her gaze turned from contemplating the cross upon a low table when the two sisters entered the room. Sister Maria Christina placed the candle that had guided their steps next to the flickering taper that bathed the room in a muted glow.

Sister Maria Lucia was, by far, the eldest bride of Christ at the convent. She was called "The Holy Sister" by some of the other nuns and there were tales beginning to spread throughout Ferrara of the miraculous healing brought about by the intercession of a woman so beloved by God that she had been allowed to live far beyond the normal span of years. Other tales abounded, of course, for the sisters loved and craved gossip and tales of the outside world more than bread or wine. Some said that she was the illegitimate daughter of a prince or a king. Another said that the Sister had once spoken to her of living in New Spain for a time, far across the ocean where the blood of martyrs still cried out for justice. Sister Maria Christina had never conversed with her, for she was too humble in the hierarchy of the convent to warrant a private conversation with the venerable lady but she always made sure to be close enough to hear her sing at prayers. Sister Maria Lucia's voice was fragile and soft, but it still maintained a fair measure of a beauty that must have once made her sound like an angel.

Sister Maria Lucia smiled and effortlessly dismissed the infirmaress. "Thank you for bringing her, Sister. I will trouble you no longer this night."

Sister Magdalena left the room with an audible huff. AS soon as the door had closed Sister Maria motioned to the stool placed close to the bed. She looked at the younger woman with a twinkle in her eye. "She offered to sit with me but that woman has the face of a hatchet."

From outside the room they heard a muffled gasp and the sound of rapid footsteps departing. Sister Maria Christina clapped her hand over her mouth to suppress an inappropriate burst of laughter.

Sister Maria Lucia smiled broadly, which caused the wrinkles in her face to spread like cracks in a parched field. "I thought that she might be listening. She is a mean sort of woman. I have often thought that her patients die so rapidly simply to be freed from her tender care."

Sister Maria Christina could no longer contain herself and the two women spent several minutes laughing together.

"Have you recently taken your vows?" Sister Maria Lucia asked her when their laughter had abated. She nodded. Beneath her veil the newly shorn hair still felt peculiar, as though she were a soldier who had lost a limb. "What is the name given to you at birth?"

Sister Maria Christina hesitated. Although it might be a sin she could not yet think of herself by the name she had taken with her vows. In her heart of hearts she was still Marietta, who used to run through the fields near her home with the butcher's son. "Marietta," she whispered.

"Then for this night I will call you Marietta and we shall converse like old friends. I do not wish to be alone this night."

"Would you have me send for a confessor, Sister?" Marietta rose from her stool, ready to rouse the priest who served the convent if the Holy Sister wished it.

"I confessed a few days ago and what few sins have taken residence upon my soul are so inconsequential that it hardly seems necessary to bother Father on a blustery night such as this." The nun was silent for a second and then laughed softly. "When I returned to the church my confession lasted half a day and my confessor fainted. I have only recently finished the novenas he set me as penance."

"You..returned to the church? You can not mean that you put aside your holy vows Sister?" Marietta could not keep the shock from her voice. While it was not unheard of for a sister to engage in affairs of the heart or even to give birth to children while still brides of Christ few put aside the veil.

"It is something of a family tradition." An enigmatic smile played across the deeply wrinkled face. "Would you like to hear my story? Matins has not yet been sung and I need little sleep. If the Angel of Death finds me this night I would prefer to greet him as a friend, with my eyes open wide. But be warned. It is not a gentle story that will comfort a sister who had only begun her life in the church.

Marietta nodded eagerly, unwilling to speak lest the sister rethink her decision.

"Bring me the box." The sister pointed across the cell to a small table which held the crucifix and an ornate wooden box. It was small, made of dark wood, and in places the carving had been worn smooth. When Marietta had placed the box on the bed she reached under her white scapular and removed a heavy golden chain from which hung an ornate key. Her hand shook, and it took several attempts before the sister could fit the key into the lock and open the box.

It smelled of roses. Dried petals crumbling to dust littered the top of the box, shielding the contents from sight. Sister Maria brushed them away gently. "The roses were so beautiful, pink Castilian roses that bloomed for months upon that rocky hill." She murmured, and began lifting each piece from beneath its fragrant covering.

There was no rhythm to the collection, no unifying force that drew them together except in the mind of the old woman whose smiles and laughing eyes suddenly made her appear much younger. Marietta looked closer at the face that was lit with memory, drawing the bones behind the fragile skin and seeing the delicate nose and lovely eyes that were golden in the light of the candle. She was very beautiful once, Marietta thought, with a surge of jealously that she was immediately ashamed of. How could such a thought cross her mind in the presence of a sister whose piety and devotion to the church were revered by all? That she herself had always been plain made no difference now.

There was a sheaf of papers tied with a ribbon, knotted around two ornate pearl rings, one black and one white. A shell. A set of wickedly sharp looking daggers. A feather, long as her arm, and vibrantly green in color. Several of the other pieces were jewelry. A cross caught her eye. It was set with a brilliantly clear stone that shone in the light, as large as a robin's egg.

"Is that a..." Marietta could not finish the sentence. This cross was the treasure of a prince, not a nun who had taken a vow of poverty.

"A diamond? Yes. It was a gift from a king who was once a great man. One of the two men that I loved." She searched through the box and pulled out a golden ring that was set with green stone. "This was from the other, and had he lived I would never have returned to the church." There were tears on the nun's face now as the memory of her life overwhelmed her.

Sister Maria wiped the tears from her cheeks and untied the sheaf of papers. She held the two rings in her hand and touched the pearls that shone with the life of the water that had given them birth. "They belonged to my mother and my father." She unfolded the first piece of parchment and showed Marietta the sketch, drawn in red chalk, which glowed with vitality despite the simplicity of the work. In a few strokes the artist had caught the likeness of an extraordinarily handsome man with long, curling hair and a stern expression. "My father, Cesare Borgia, who was also called Duke Valentino." Sister Maria looked up at Marietta's gasp. "You are familiar with this name, I see."

Marietta nodded. There was scarcely a person alive who had not heard of the infamous Borgia family. Duke Valentino had left the church that his father ruled as pope and blazed a bloody trail across Italy that had almost succeeded in uniting it into one kingdom.

The second piece of parchment was also a sketch done in red chalk. The rendered woman had a sweet, gentle face with full lips and curls that were tumbling down her shoulders. "You?" Marietta asked.

Sister Maria Lucia smiled but shook her head. "No, although we had a strong resemblance. My mother, Lucrezia Borgia." The sister laughed at the expression on Marietta's face. "Scandalized now, I see. Close your mouth, my dear, before an ill humor enters your body." Sister Maria picked up the shell and showed it to the young nun. It was no different from the thousand other shells washed up on sandy beaches throughout Italy, white with a delicate pink center.

"I was born Lucia Borgia and I was raised near the town of Grosetto, close to the sea."


	2. Chapter 2

A Note- Sorry about the delay but I am about one chapter away from completing another project and it has been taking a lot of my time. You can private message me for details because it is very definitely Borgia inspired. And thanks for the kind reviews. You guys are the best

I was raised in Grosseto, which is close to the sea.

Rain never seemed to fall on the sand colored villa that rested on a small hill which sloped down to a rocky shoreline. The small square building would blaze with pink and gold radiance in the morning and when the sun slipped into the west it would turn the groves into labyrinths of shadow. War did not exist, or disease, or sadness, for my mother and cousins worked together to maintain a wall of protection that insulated me from the turbulence that characterized those years. All that I can remember of my childhood is the sweetness of the figs and the grapes that I plucked, still warm, from my father's vineyards, the smell of the bread when it was removed from the ovens and the strength of my mother's arms when she would clasp me to her after a day spent playing in the fields. And as real as all of these things was the presence of God in my heart.

From my earliest days I could sense Him in the pounding of the surf upon the rocks and the wind as it blew through my hair, whispering secrets about the sanctity of creation and the divine force that animates life. God was present for me in all things and I spoke to him and his angels as though they were the closest acquaintances, the dearest confidants of my heart.

Two events are noteworthy from a childhood that was marked by little more then the profound happiness of the innocent. The first occurred as I approached my seventh year of life. In that place we did not mark the passing of the seasons by a calendar or a glass, but by the rhythms of the earth, which had not changed since ancient times. It was a cycle of planting and harvest, plenty and then the mild chill of the winter. Fish from the sea were bountiful and during the bustle of harvest time the children would be sent into town to retrieve fish that were used in the pots of stew that fed the workers. My eldest cousin led us down to the water near town and in my inattention I became separated and wandered like a small bird among the rocks, examining the pockets of water that had been left by the receding tide. A silvery fish flopped in one of the puddles, close to death as the water that is its life sank into the sand slowly like grains through a glass. I caught the fish in the skirt of my shift, becoming hopelessly wet, and carried it in my arms tenderly as a babe to the water and watched it swim away.

"Why did you do that?" A deep voice asked. The man sitting on the rock stood and pulled back the hood of a gray monk's robe, revealing a harsh face bracketed with the lines of skin that has spent much of its time in the sun.

"God did not want the fish to die." I said, too innocent to realize that my words were dangerous.

"He did not wish a fish to die? Then why was it cast up on the shore?" His voice was a deep baritone which thundered and echoed. The water wherein I stood, deeply aquamarine and warm, teamed with life and it swirled and eddied around my toes, which dug into the wet sand beneath them. Under my foot a small white seashell was revealed by the shifting sand and my curls trailed in the water like golden snakes when I stooped to pick it up.

"So that I could rescue it." I said, and the voice of my cousin Vitello sounded in the distance, calling my name frantically. I placed the newly discovered treasure in the man's hand and he watched me leave with a contemplative expression. In the days that followed the strange man's face haunted my thoughts and I begged my cousin to return with me to the beach.

"Back again, oh savior of fishes?" The friar asked without a glance in my direction. I ignored his question and asked one of my own.

"Who are you looking for?" I climbed up next to him on the rock, a pitted boulder whose rough texture tore at my hands. Profound sadness hung about him, as though he had lost something precious.

The man made a noise in the back of his throat, halfway between a growl and a laugh. "God."

I sat close to him on the boulder that was his perch, ignoring the dropping of birds who had liberally splattered his robe, and told him about God, the comforter, who sent his angels to watch over me and who sang such beautiful melodies in my ear. The friar wept, and his tears fell into the pink center of the scallop shell that rested in his hand. A symbol of baptism, he said through his sobs, and faith renewed through the belief of a child. He returned the shell to me, saying that its purpose had been served.

Two figures were walking towards us on the beach. The slim, elegant form of my mother, clad all in black, and my cousin Vitello, who had a bright red patch like a flag on his cheek. I ran to her, and for all that I was filthy she picked me up and hugged me tightly.

"My dearest one." She murmured, stroking her hand through my sand stiffened curls. "Stay with your cousin for a moment while I speak with your new friend." Her gentle words were at odds with the dark fire in her eyes and I was suddenly afraid. Vitello held my hand tightly while my mother walked to where the friar sat, and there was a new fluidity to her stride, a quiet purpose and coiled strength. The friar must have sensed the danger as well, for his words were rushed.

"Dona, your daughter.." And then he stopped, and looked closely at my mother. Surprised recognition clouded his senses."I have seen your face before. " He looked deeply disturbed.

She stilled. "Where, good friar? I have a common enough face."

The friar laughed but there was no humor in it. "Untrue. I thought you beautiful. And deadly."

"Where, good Friar?" She repeated, and her voice was a sibilant whisper.

"Nepi. I watched as you entered the city with the Borgia whore.. And this girl, she looks...so like her. There were rumors..." My mother had something in her hand and she stood very close to the friar. He looked at where I stood and a horrible change came over his face, fear and revulsion and betrayal. "Borgia." He whispered, and it sounded like a curse. My mother moved like a striking snake and then retreated, and the friar pressed a hand to this neck where a crimson stain bloomed like a rose on his gray robe.

"She has been graced by God, Dona." He whispered as he leaned against the boulder for support in the last glimpse that I had of him. "He will claim her."

I did not know what the Friar meant until I reached my womanly flowering at the age of thirteen. My mother and father, for he had returned after many years away, spoke to me the very evening the blood which is the curse of Eve appeared on my thighs. I learned from them the story of my birth, my true name, and the sad and beautiful love story that they had born witness to. They sat together, my father's arm around my mother's shoulders, lending her his strength as she prepared to let me go. I remember it so clearly, as if the events only happened a year before, not close to seventy years, and all those I loved now dead. My mother, Betta, straight backed and slim as a girl with white beginning to streak through her hair like lightening. And my father, the Borgia assassin Micheletto, with his hair turned to ash and his dark blue eyes full of love and the pain which never left him. I was offered then the choice of determining my own fate, and only time has shown me how precious a gift that truly was, hard won and bought with the blood and sacrifice of the woman who had given me life. There was a dowry in wait that would allow me to marry anyone, and documents that named me the daughter of Duke Valentino. Already my father had received inquires from father's interested in an alliance and I knew that this was the dearest hope of my mother's heart, that I should marry and bear her many grandchildren.

My brother Nico, with his mop of red curls, played at my feet as my parent's waited for me to speak. Life stretched out before me like a magnificent tapestry, full of paths that might be trod, adventures that waited to be savored and experienced. But the course of my life had been set, and I embraced it. The sacrifice of my mother sounded in my ears, and the tragedy of my dead father and the crimes of my family, whose sins I could now atone for with a life of service.

"I shall enter a convent."

"Did it shock you to learn that your parents.." Marietta trailed off, unsure of how to continue.

The nun on the bed laughed. "Did it shock me to learn that my parents were Cesare and Lucrezia Borgia, infamous incestuous lovers and children of the pope who was called the Antichrist? " Sister Maria Lucia's left eyebrow rose until her forehead was a canvas of lines and hollows. The sarcasm was gentle, but evident.

Marietta laughed. Verily, it was a silly question.

"It was a tragedy that they could only ever love one another. Love is a great gift from God, my young sister, but it seldom appears as we would wish it. As I soon discovered to my peril." Sister Maria Lucia handed the white shell to Marietta, who stroked the delicate ridges before she placed it back in the chest. The elderly nun then removed the two finely made daggers, which rested in leather sheaths whose leather was dry and cracked with age. " I had set my heart on the path of the Lord, but my mother and father insisted that I should also learn the way of the blade."


	3. Chapter 3

"I had set my heart on the path of the Lord, but my mother and father insisted that I should also learn the way of the...blade."

Reclining on her cot Sister Maria Lucia had begun to cough and finished the sentence in a gasp. It was a moist, wracking cough that brought a bubble of foam to her lips. Marietta wiped the spittle away and brought a goblet that she filled with wine to the sister's lips, supporting her head as she drank deeply. Her skin, already so pale, had taken on a gray tinge in the flickering light of the candle and the nails on the hand wrapped around her wrist were blue. She truly is dying, Marietta realized, and she wanted to weep in sadness and gratitude that she had been chosen to sit by the venerable woman's side and hear her last words. Sister Maria Lucia must have divined Marietta's thoughts for she patted the other nun's hand gently and smiled before she continued her narrative.

As a protected bride of Christ I would have no need to learn such skills, I protested when he sent my tutors away. My father responded with the tale of a convent attacked by the retreating French army, its holy sister's raped and murdered. "You will not leave until you can defend yourself. My oath to your father demands it."

That morning he took me to the bowels of the Villa, a dank, airless place that I seldom ventured and showed me a collection of blades that he had laid out on a rough wooden table. Spider-webs brushed at my hair and I cringed, horrified, wishing that I could escape. He bid me to sit at his feet and listen as he explained the unique purpose of each. My hands passed over them, deadly instruments kept in a permanent state of lethal sharpness, and hesitated over one blade in particular. It was carved with a design of roses on the hilt and I smiled to see the incongruently of the elegant design on so large and sharp a blade. "One of your father's." He murmured, picking up the knife and caressing the carving with his fingers. Micheletto de Corella was not a large man, although he seemed to me a giant among mere mortals. Rather he was average size, with corded muscles easily concealed beneath his garments. His hair, once red as fire, now flowed to his chest in disordered white waves, where it mingled with his beard. He did not appear to blend into the darkness that surrounded us in the cellar that was lit only by the brace of candles on the table. Rather is seemed that he was the source of the darkness, and it enveloped him lovingly.

"Your father was fast. But there was too much softness in him for him to have been an accomplished killer. He could never stomach the knife in the dark."

I sought to tease my father, for I had never seen a side to him that was not gentle, the very best of fathers whose rasping voice would sing me to sleep. "As you could?"

He threw the dagger in his hand. A rat had been scuttling around behind the shelves where the cheeses aged, grown fat and complacent in the dark solitude of the cellar. The instant its head emerged my father struck. It died with a tiny scream that sounded almost human, blade buried within the bloated stomach. The level of skill it demonstrated was terrifying.

"I preferred it." I listened more closely to him after that, and only ventured to speak again as he showed me the correct way to sharpen a blade.

"What can you tell me of my mother?" He looked at me from under the shaggy mane of white hair, eyes like midnight colored velvet.

"Which of them?" It was very like him, the gentle reminder that although I had been born of another's body the woman who had tucked me into bed each night and smothered my face with kisses also had a claim on the title. There was a great fervour in me to know all there was to discover about them, the two who had given me life and the two that had formed me.

"I would know your thoughts on both, my father." He laid the dagger across his knee and sharpened it with a stone, the movements long and rhythmic. "Lucrezia Borgia is the saddest person I have ever known. The world took everything from her, and then took still more until there was nothing left to give. She is a shell of the person my master loved, a woman whose smiles were as warm as the summer sun."

"She was his softness?" I asked, referring to his earlier words, for there was little I had learned about the character of Duke Valentino that implied softness. He had been a ruthless leader, a prince of the church who had cast off the scarlet robes in order to gain temporal power.

"Yes." My father breathed, his voice making a soft hiss of the words. "His softness and his heart. I saw it the first time." The movement of his arm stilled as he lost himself in the memories of a previous life.

"And...Mother?"

My father did not often laugh. The peculiar, grating sound sound that emerged from his bent head was tinged with rust." For all her care she is the most ruthless killer I have ever known." His voice was tinged with an unmistakable note of pride. "A gifted student." I thought of the friar at the beach who had slumped against the rock in my last sight of him, red staining his robes. My mother had killed a man of God simply for recognizing my Borgia face.

"What of Duke Valentino?"

My father sighed. "He was a man torn apart by what others wished for him. Cesare Borgia was a born general, fierce and cunning, but his father wished him to be a prince of the church. By the time he had thrown those bonds aside too little time remained to his families supremacy. Had the Borgia Pope lived longer my master would have ruled the world."

"You loved him." It was not a question. This was my father and I could read the love that was on his face the way that I could read a coming tempest as it raced over the waves. He looked at me, searching for horror or condemnation but found neither.

"Yes."

I laid my hand on his bristled cheek and stroked the deep lines."How fortunate I am to have been born into a family bound by so much love." 

"Your father was a sodomite?" Marietta shrieked. It sounded shockingly loud in the small cell, the word echoing like a denunciation from the lips of God.

Sister Lucia's manner grew suddenly colder then the breezes that came down from the mountains. "My father..." She emphasized the word, "was the very best of men, who, like St. Joseph, loved a child not his own and I will hear no word against him."

Marietta, instantly contrite, hastened to explain. "Your pardon, Sister, it is just that the sin of Sodom is so reviled by the godly."

Sister Maria Lucia did not relent. "Have you never engaged in the hymn of the convent, as I have done on a multitude of occasions? Pray explain to me the difference."

Marietta blushed deeply at the sister's frank words, crimson rising like a tide to stain her face. Physical relationships between the inhabitants of the nunnery were not openly discussed although their existence was known to all. There was a postulant that she was especially close to, whom she visited on the nights when the demands of her flesh became overwhelming. She had never equated the heinous sin of Sodom and Gomorroh with the shy kisses and fumbling caresses that relieved the ache of her earthly body.

"I know not, sister, but I am heartily sorry for my offense." Above all else Marietta did not wish to have the sister cease her tale and bid her depart. Sr. Maria Lucia face softened, and she continued her narrative. The girl before her was very young, and her words were mild compared to some, who demanded that the lovers of their own sex be burned at the stake.

He continued my training the next day, only this time it was to be more then just words.

"In a fight there is no such thing as honor, only victory, and winning the right to live another day."

He brought my hands and curled them around the knives, showing the vulnerable parts where a man could be rendered insensible. "Here and here," he said, the groin, the neck, and the spot where a blade would slip between the ribs and enter a man's heart, killing him instantly. He made me hit him again and again with both my hands and the two wooden practice blades he had made, metal being too likely to cause injury. I put no vigor into my strikes, for there was no way that I could be persuaded to injure my father. My weak efforts frustrated him, and he called for my mother, who never observed our lessons.

He took the toy daggers from my fingers and bid me watch. The air in the cellar was moldy, smelling of decay as the cheeses ripened and wine aged along the walls and I stood among the shadows and was soon forgotten. "Show this girl what it means to hunt." Father said, and he watched Mother closely as she took off the apron that protected her dress and stretched her fingers wide, loosening the stiffened joints. She must have been making bread, for she smelled of flour and yeast and the burnt deliciousness of the oven. A simple golden cross hung at her neck, and to my eyes she was the embodiment of love and goodness, more like the Madonna then the gilded effigies at church.

My father and mother began to circle on another in the packed dirt, their footsteps scarcely leaving a mark as they moved in counterpoint. My father's leg drug slightly, the permanent reminder of his time spent in the Castle St. Angelo being tortured for his knowledge of Duke Valentino. When he struck the movement was a blur, and he wrapped his arm around my mother's slender neck in a hold that she, so slight and small, could not possibly escape. I did not see how it happened but suddenly my father stumbled back, gasping, and my mother was in a crouch, a knife held in each hand and a triumphant smile on her face. She was a different person then, with the pins holding her dark hair gone and the dark locks twirling around her like a dancer.

This was no longer a lesson. It was a battle for supremacy. Their movements were impossibly fast as they struck at one another with knives that had been turned so the killing edge would not find a home in fragile flesh. He trapped her against a beam, using his superior strength to muscle her across the room and I thought the contest was finished but somehow she freed her arm and dealt him a vicious blow across the mouth. With the other hand she brought the keen edge of the knife against the thrumming pulse at his neck. The strike had caused a thin trickle of blood to cascade down his face. He turned slowly to face her, and wiped the crimson trickle with the back of his hand. Never raking his eyes from mother he licked it, savoring the taste in his mouth and his eyes were dark blue flames, lit from within. "Go tend to your brother for a bit, eh." My father murmured, never once looking in my direction. I ran, for the scent of desire was heavy in the air and I, promised to God, fled before it. The noises that emerged from the cellar for the next hour were muffled but I could well imagine the nature of the battle that they were now engaged in. The shrieks and moans that sounded like pain but were instead the sweetest form of pleasure.

My lessons changed after that, and my mother's hand was at work in the nature of my instruction. I was made to always wear the practice daggers at my waist and strapped to my leg. Throughout the day I was attacked in turn by my parents and my young cousins, who took to it with fervour. I was pinched or gently smacked with wooden spoons, or doused with water or spiders were put on my shoulders until I could draw the blades and hit the attacker, which stopped the assault. It did not take long before I had mastered the art of drawing my knives in an instant and then striking out, my muscles knowing instantly what they were needed to do. My father and mother were as silent as shades and the first occasion that I heard my father before he reached me I cried with delight, and his smile was full of pride. The wooden blades were eventually replaced by honed steel, much as the innocent girl I had been was tempered, and made into someone more befitting the legacy of my family. There was too much softness in me also to be the trained killer, but I became skilled in the art, and almost as fast as he who trained me. Before a year had passed my father and mother escorted me to the nunnery where I was to be trained on the service of God.

"My father died two years after the passing of Lucrezia Borgia. He went quietly, in his sleep, and he rests in a place that overlooks the sea. I do not think of him as he looked as we laid him there, so dignified in his best tunic, his white hair in perfect order. I remember him smiling when I bested him, and the rough voice that still sounds like a lullaby in my ears when sleep eludes me." Sister Maria Lucia said.

"Did he die in the fullness of grace?" Marietta asked timidly, not wanting to offend the sister who was brushing tears from her face. "Can we ever know how one stands before Judgement? In my eyes his sins were absolved by his love for me, a child not of his own blood, and I eagerly await our coming reunion." Sister Maria replaced the knives in the chest and pulled out a small wooden crucifix, which looked as though it had hung from a rosary.

"The walls of the convent loomed before me."


	4. Chapter 4

"The wall of the convent loomed before me.

"Do you recall your first entry into the sanctity of the convent, my sister? When the loving arms of our savior enfolded you in the blessed peace that can only be found in his service?"

Marietta bowed her head and did not respond to the question. Her first glimpse of the convent had filled her with nothing but dread, and the lovely rose colored bricks a prison where she was to be buried alive. She sought to control her expression as rage at the injustice swamped. Something must have alerted the sister to her inner turmoil for Marietta's chin was raised with a trembling hand and her face scrutinized.

Sister Lucia shook her head. "I think you do not remember. You have not a true vocation, do you, my dear?"

"I serve without complaint." Marietta said flatly. She followed the rules of the order, and if rebellion lived in her heart the words had never crossed her lips.

Sister Maria Lucia did not reply, only continued to look at the other woman with gentle understanding.

"I was sold!" The words were wrenched from her, and Marietta buried her face in her hands. Her shoulders shook as the grief of years exploded forth in a torrent with the words that she had repressed behind the placid mask, first as a postulant and even now, after she had taken her final vows. "I nursed my mother for two years after a still birth and fever stole her wits. And the only repayment for my devotion was that when my father remarried to a girl my own age I was sent here that their children would receive a greater inheritance without the strain of providing a dowry. I begged them to let me leave instead. There was someone..." Marietta's voice trailed off as she thought about him, the friend of her youth who had become more then a friend, and the single solitary kiss they had shared before she had been sent away. "There was someone whom I wished to marry. They preferred to shackle me to the church rather then see me wed beneath my station. I was related to the D'este, you see, and could not sully their name. I have been left here to rot, entombed in these walls."

The tears finally overwhelmed and Marietta buried her face in the scratchy wool of the blanket that covered Sister Maria Lucia and wept until her chest heaved from the effort and her eyes burned as though dipped in acid. A shaking hand came to rest on Marietta's wimple and began a rhythmic stroking as the girl cried. Finally the sister broke her silence. "Oh my dear, how I wish that you could see that this bondage of women sold by their fathers is not the will of God. He does not desire our confinement, only sacrifice. I found joy in the convent because it was my own choice. These laws are not the wishes of God, but only the feeble attempts of men to safeguard wealth, the very thing that most keeps us from holiness. Enclosure. Bah." The sister made a disgusted noise in her throat, as though she had discovered a rotting animal crawling with maggots. "All the Council of Trent should be thus confined. It would greatly benefit the church."

Marietta laughed and wiped the wetness from her face. "Should those words be heard outside of this cell you would face the pyre, Holy Sister."

Sister Maria Lucia chuckled dryly. "Then rejoice that I shall soon meet my creator and we can determine for ourselves if my words are heretical. And besides, one old sack of bones tied to the stake would make a poor spectacle. The last time the stake and I seemed destined to meet it would have been much more picturesque."

Sister Maria looked at Marietta's face and began to cough in earnest as laughter choked her. Marietta fetched the goblet of wine and brought it to the sister's lips again. It seemed to refresh her, and she regained the use of her voice. "Sister, please refrain from your repeated looks of stunned shock or laughter will carry me to the grave before the angel of death makes his appearance."

"You were almost burned?" Marietta squeaked. The laughter had made tears stream in rivers and course down the folds of the elderly sister's face. She brushed them away and gasped. "As you will see in time. And Marietta.." Sister Maria extended one finger and lifted each corner of Marietta's mouth until it formed the shape of a smile, which made the other nun chuckle and then smile in truth. For all that this woman was near six decades her elder Marietta felt closer to her then anyone she had ever known. This was her sister in more then title, and a woman with whom she could share the deepest secrets of her heart. "Yes, my sister?" Lucia patted her hand. "The walls of this convent are not so high that they can not be scaled if the heart is willing. Let me think on it while I continue my tale."

The walls of the convent loomed before me. The assistance of my patron, Cardinal D'Este, had secured a place in a beautiful convent among the foothills close to one of our great cities. The rules were not so strict then, in the time before enclosure, and we were allowed visitors and to go about God's work in the city if the need was occasioned. I shall not name the convent or the city wherein it lies, for even now I feel that loyalty to the order binds my tongue in silence. Rather then a prison, the gray stone walls of the convent were a place of refuge where I could devote myself with greater fervor to the service of God, and thus achieve the vindication of my family name. My parents had made the journey to the convent with me, my mother ill at ease on a horse and my father unable to conceal the pain that racked him with every unsteady movement. We parted at the gate, and theirs were not the only tears that were shed although this was the fruition of my dearest hope.

I immersed myself in the life of the cloister, and rose from my pallet each morning with a song in my heart. The other girls wept with homesickness during the night and although I deeply missed my family it felt as though I had come home at last. That is not to say that I was the perfect model of Christian decorum, as I am sure you can imagine having some greater knowledge of my temperament. Laughter rang out too frequently in the hushed halls of the cloister when I traversed them, and I led the other girls in many foolish adventures that tried the patience of the sisters. Most of my misdeeds went undetected, however, for I had been well schooled in stealth. When bread went missing from the kitchens and found its way to the hungry children who clustered outside the gates the true culprit was never suspected, except perhaps by the prioress, who developed a violent dislike for me almost immediately. She beat me soundly, but when she punished my fellow postulants far more harshly then was warranted boils erupted on her skin, and she was confined to her cell until fear of the plague had passed.

After my arrival it was discovered that my voice was very pleasing, and melodic when mingled with the angelic voices of the choir. It was the voice of a fallen angel, the leader of the choir said, low pitched and sounding of the earth and the fine caress of velvet as it whispers across the skin. It had always been thus, and later the Cardinal D'Este remarked that it was remarkably similar to that of my grandfather, Rodrigo Borgia. Days were passed in song, prayers that marked the passage of the hours as we commended the souls of earth to heaven.

Part of the convent was devoted to the care of the sick and the dying, and poor women who had no one to care for them were often brought to our doorstep. Duties in the choir could not fill days sufficiently for one who had been raised on a farm with constant activity and I found myself assisting the infirmnaress in her labors. Many had once been whores and it was accounted a great sacrifice that our convent would welcome such as they into our hollowed walls, but had not Jesus himself welcomed Mary Magdalene to his bosom?

The first winter at the convent was very cold, far more chill then the mild winters of the coast, and I was constantly tormented by a pain in my throat that kept me from performing in the choir to the satisfaction of the choir mistress. After my discordant notes fell on her ears once too often during Terse she sent me to the hospital for a tonic, and I was told to rest for the remainder of the day. A visitor of great renown would soon visit the convent, and I was expected to take part.

"I am so pleased you have come." The infirmnaress said when I arrived. "I had thought to send someone for you." She took my hand and drew me across the room to where a woman dressed in rags made a small mound upon the pallet in the corner, away from the other women, who huddled together to share warmth. "She crawled here." Sister Clarita whispered. "She refuses to pray, or converse at all. Look at her face."

The sleeping woman's face was similar to the burned wreckage of a once beautiful palace, or the tattered remnants of a painting destroyed by malicious hands. Lovely, delicate features were overlaid with a multitude of small, copper colored lesions from the pox. There were deep gashes across the generous lips, and the nose was a bloody mass. She awoke when we drew close, and glared angrily. Her eyes were green, lit with gold, and very beautiful despite the angry expression. It was a familiar face and yet I could not place it. The infirmnaress, seeing my confusion, lifted my chin with one hand and then motioned to the sick woman. "She could be your twin, Lucia, were your ages closer."

Verily, the woman's face was strikingly like my own and I found that I cold not look from it. The whore returned my scrutiny, and I knelt at her side. Sister Clarita, a kindly woman, granted us such privacy as could be afforded in a room that teemed with gossiping whores, and returned to her duties on the other side of the room. The cause of the woman's illness was apparent: a long, festering knife wound began at her shoulder and cut through the valley of her breasts. It stank of putrefaction, and she could hardly be expected to live out the day.

"May I ask your name?" I inquired of the woman. Another woman who listened mocked her. "Too good to speak with the rest of us, she is. Thinks she's the daughter of a duke. " The women laughed derisively.

The room was large and without the comfort of a fire the cold from the floor seeped into your flesh and brought with it the chill of the grave. I shivered in the air but the woman on the pallet burned with fever. A basin was brought and I drew a cloth across the terrible face, trying to ease her suffering,

"Of which Duke do they speak?" The woman turned away to hide the marks of her disease.

"Do not mock me."

I spoke softly. "I do not seek to mock you. I would hear your story." I leaned in closer and spoke directly into her ear. "Are you a daughter of Duke Valentino?" I asked. She was disinclined to answer so I spoke again, in a voice scarcely louder then then a breath. "It is possible we share a common heritage."

The woman shook her head. "Not Valentino. The other one. Gandia."

In the quest to learn about the Borgia family I had heard of the Duke of Gandia, the second son of Rodrigo Borgia and Vannozza dei Cattanei. "A bastard in truth." My mother had judged. She had served in the house of Vannoza what she knew of the Duke of Gandia was deemed unfit for my virgin ears. When I inquired about him to my father a small smile had curved his thin lips. "Dead. Stabbed and dumped in the Tiber, years before you were born."

"Did you kill him?" I asked, perplexed by the smile. We were in the cellar then, and the small light for the single candle barely illuminated his face but I could sense the satisfaction in him at the memory. The lessons that day had been poison, both their uses and the correct administration.

The smile grew, and he lifted his eyes to meet mine. "No. Your father wielded the knife. Juan Borgia threatened your mother, and my master cut him down like a diseased dog." The smile was sensual, the memory of it a delight to his senses.

I tore myself from the golden trap of that memory and refocused on the woman before me. "How did you end thus, with such illustrious parentage? Was your mother also.."

The dying woman shook her head violently. "She was no whore. My mother was a dancer, and a virgin before she preformed for the pope's family and Gandia raped her. He cursed her with the disease upon my face and a bastard daughter."

"Surely she cared tenderly for you, an innocent baby free from the sin of your birth?" I asked, for I could imagine nothing else then the love which had been showered upon me from birth.

The woman on the floor laughed until blood bubbled to her lips. "She sold me to a brothel and drowned herself in the Tiber. Since then I have fucked thousands of men, Sister, and gave all of them this." She motioned at the coppery spots that painted her face, so like my own. She leaned in closer and whispered. "Churchmen I fucked for free though, and spread this blight far among the halls of the godly. One of them saw my face without paint and recognized the disease. He at least had the balls to cut me himself, instead of having a henchmen finish me off."

The tale was so evil, and filled with so much pain that I wished to turn from it, and hide myself in the cloister and not return until the sin she represented vanished from the earth. Here was the curse of my family, writ upon my own face and there was nothing I, who sought to atone for their sins, could do to save her.

"Tell me your name, sister, that I might pray for you." I begged, crying at the futility of her life, and the hate that had marked it.

The woman looked at me, her eyes hard as polished jewels in a ruined face. "My name is Dolores. Save your prayers for someone who wants them." She croaked. "I have been in hell all my days. It holds no terror for me."

Sister Maria Lucia compressed her lips to stop them them from trembling. "She died the next morning, unrepentant and unshriven. She was buried in unhallowed ground and I alone prayed for the repose of her soul. I continue to do so." For the first time that night Sister Maria Lucia seemed to feel the great weight of her life, and the death of all those who had touched it. Grief pulled her inwards, and without the vitality that had colored her every moment she was no more then a very old woman, no bigger then a child struggling not to cry.

Marietta struggled to find the words to comfort her, as she herself had comforted. "It is a sin of hubris to assume that you are responsible for the salvation of another soul, Sister. That office belongs to Christ. That the girl had a tragic life and died unrepentant is regrettable, but it was through no fault of yours." Sister Maria Lucia wiped the tears from her eyes.

"You ease my mind, Sister. And I am in great need of that comfort for the time of my first great testing was at hand. The cardinal was coming."


	5. Chapter 5

Author's note- For Sadi, whose reviews always make my day.

"The Cardinal was coming."

Marietta looked to the chest to see which item the sister would remove. The pieces were a tangled jumble of treasures both sublime and mundane in the velvet lined confines but Sister Maria Lucia made no move of her hand toward it. "Is there no token for this memory, Sister?" Marietta asked.

"There was, once. A wildflower plucked from the hills near the convent, and hidden away in a psalter the cardinal gave me. It proved a fragile thing, though, and soon crumbled to dust." Her smile was sad. "Like first love, which bloomed for a single night."

"You did not keep the psalter?" It seemed strange to Marietta that a precious illuminated book of the psalms would be discarded while a common shell and a lock of light brown hair tied with a ribbon occupied pride of place.

"That particular item found its way back to he who presented it." Sister Maria Lucia smiled, and the expression was tinged with malice. "But I will tell ofthat particular episode presently. For as I said, the Cardinal was coming."

I was fifteen years old the first time that the Cardinal came to visit the convent. Is it a sign of vanity to look back and know that I was very beautiful? This was so long ago that it feels the face must have belonged to someone else, and I can appreciate the beauty bequeathed to me by my parents from a distance. I was a child that the sunshine favored, gold like the summer sunsets over the ocean by my home and the walls had yet to bleach its sheen from my skin. Hair flowed past my waist in a riot of curls that were difficult to constrain beneath a veil and my body had ripened with womanly curves

Vanity I did not have then, for it never crossed my mind to take pleasure in my looks. Pride, however, I had in abundance and it would prove to be my undoing. I thought myself inured from the longings that had so dominated the lives of my family. Men had pursued me before, drawn by the promise of a rich dowry. Handsome, distinguished men, and all of them were sent away at my insistence. I harkened to the words of St. Paul and thought myself a paragon of virtue, far above the needs of the flesh.

Ippolito d'Este rode at the head of a long procession clad in splendid robes that did little to disguise his bulk. I did not see his arrival but gossip flows like a rain swollen river in a convent and everyone learned the details of him and his retinue, churchmen and soldiers who traveled with the cardinal and were housed in the guest house located outside the gates. My sisters and I waited in the chapel for the cardinal to grace us with his presence. There were murmurs and laughter from behind the grate that separated the visitors but they died away when the choir began to sing the prayers that marked the passage of hours. Our choir was famous throughout the region and the sweet music carried across the hills to the town, where many would stop and listen and find solace for their spirits in the music.

Sister Agnes and I had been chosen to sing the "Ave Maria." Ours were counted the finest voices in the choir and the mistress had made us practice unceasingly that we might delight our audience. As we sang I could feel the eyes of the cardinal on me like a brand and I knew that it was not my voice that had captured his attention. Men had looked upon me in this manner for years, and it was easy to recognize a hot flame of a desire that had little to do with the vows of chastity to which we had dedicated ourselves. I had prepared myself for this, warned by my mother, who had some inkling of the Cardinal's motivation in sponsoring me. What I had not prepared myself for was the sight of the young man who watched from behind the cardinal.

Light from a lamp illuminated the face of the young man clad in brown robes clearly and it stopped my breath. There are artists who have managed to capture the perfect melding of masculine and feminine beauty that was his face. They appear as angels in their works, with the lithe bodies of warriors and the sensuous mouths of women who long for the touch of a man. Had Lucifer appeared thus before the Fall, I wondered in a daze as his eyes met mine. Surely the Angel of Light could not have been any more glorious then this man with his hair the color of newly spilled blood and eyes of dark fire. Our eyes locked on one another, and it was as though I had begun to burn as well.

Sister Agnes had long ago mastered the art of speaking without moving her lips, using the voices of the other singers who had moved on to the next prayer to muffle her whisper. "You are observed, little one, and not just by the Cardinal."

I made no reply but my face flamed. She stifled a chuckle. Sister Agnes was the third daughter of a great and noble lineage and felt no particular inclination towards the veil before she was given as a bride of Christ by her father. Sister Agnes was tall and elegant, older then I but beautiful with her dark brown hair and honey colored eyes. She had long ago resigned herself to the veil and her wealth allowed for her to maintain a privileged existence little different from that she had enjoyed before becoming a nun. She had many lovers, all of them women of the convent who, it was told, found great delight in her arms.

The eyes of the young man met mine again and again and a peculiar lethargy swept through my body. When Sister Agnes and I raised our voices again it was for the beautiful young man that I sang, and the budding passion that I experienced for the first time added poignancy to the music.

As we left the church Sister leaned forward to whisper in my ear. "Not unmoved, I see." Her warm breath caused a shiver to race down my spine. My gaze flew to hers and the sister's smile changed. She leaned forward again. "Come to me after vespers, Lucia, and I will show you another song." Similar invitations had come in the year I had been at the convent, but this was the first time that I did not immediately reject the offer. My mind was in a daze for the remainder of the day, and the image of the young man was foremost in my thoughts although I did not forget the lecherous stare of the Cardinal and all that it portended. It was no surprise, therefore, when one of the sisters came to the dormitory with the message that the cardinal wished to speak to me in private.

My knives were strapped in place, hidden beneath the folds of my wimple as I walked across the courtyard. A cloaked figure waited to escort me with his hood drawn over his face. It was with a start that I recognized the young man from the church and my face flamed. He bowed and motioned me to accompany him. We walked apart from one another, shielded from prying eyes by the walls of the convent, which threw us into deepest shadow.

"You sing beautifully, Lucia." He said in a voice scarcely louder then our footfalls on the stone path.

"How do you know me?" I whispered back, for I had never met this young man before.

His head turned towards me, granting me a view of his face, which looked unhappy. "He speaks to me often of you, who is called Lucia de Corella but is not." We had almost arrived at the to the door when he reached out and furtively touched my hand. "Guard yourself." He whispered before we entered.

I was shown to a large room attached to the most luxurious chamber that the house offered. The cardinal greeted me warmly, taking my hand and leading me to a window where a long cushioned bench sat bathed in sunshine. Food waited on a side table, sufficient for three men, and of such stunning complexity that I, who had been raised on simple fare, could not identify most of the dishes.

"Lucia, my dear!" He said warmly, and he patted my hands in an avuncular manner. "I was so glad that you decided to enter this convent at my suggestion."

"Your eminence has been most kind." I murmured, refusing to meet his stare and keeping my eyes modestly downcast.

The cardinal started in astonishment. "Your voice." He said. "Beautiful. It is as though I was in the presence of the Borgia Pope again. And to hear you sing, it is as if carnal lust had been given a voice." He put his finger, long and white, under my chin and lifted until I was forced to meet his eyes. Ippolito d'Este was heavy and old, and the warm light did little to flatter him.

"Your eminence?" I asked.

"I just wished to see your face, my dear. It has been many years since I saw you. On the occasion that I brought your mother to provide solace to mybeloved sister in law."

"Yes, your eminence, I have been told."

He shifted closer to me on the bench so that his thigh brushed against my own. The wall prevented me from moving away and I was horrifically aware of his breathing, which grew more shallow the closer he came. Sweat dotted his upper lip and his tongue snaked out, moistening it. "You are so like her, my dear. My lady Lucrezia is no longer the golden haired angel I see before me but still so beautiful, as sensual as a rose in full bloom just before the petals begin to fall. Have you kept your maidenhead for Christ, my dear?"

I jumped to my feet in shock but he was prepared for my reaction. He grabbed my arm and jerked me roughly back to the bench. "Sit, Lucia." He barked, and then he studied me. "Brother Peter." He called, and the heavy door opened slightly. "Bring the gift."

The door opened and the young monk entered. Seen in the bright sunshine he was even more handsome and scarcely looked old enough to have entered an order. His cheeks were flushed as he walked forward with a small book that he placed in my hands. Our fingers met briefly, and I was as achingly aware of the contact as if I had touched a white hot iron. He bowed to the Cardinal and departed, meeting my gaze for a single moment as he turned to leave.

The book was a psalter, beautifully made and blazing with gold leaf and vivid colors of blue and purple in the illustrations. As I examined the pages I discovered that a wildflower had been hidden next to an illustration of the Garden of Eden and I quickly closed the book to conceal its presence. "Your eminence is most generous." I said.

"I am." He said, with a smile. "Would you have me continue to be generous, Lucia? You would find me to be a benevolent patron."

"Your eminence has been most generous but I fear that you expect repayment from me that would go against the noble purpose I have set myself. My family history is known to you, Cardinal d'Este, and I beg that you would leave me to that chaste and blessed state of purity that befits a bride of Christ."

Oh, the sincerity of my passionate appeal to his calling! Looking back I can see how my words inflamed his imagination. The incongruity of the virgin Borgia nun. The cardinal's breathing quickened still more and he seized my hand.

"Ah yes, your hot Spanish blood. I have long wondered if the rumors of your family's sensuality are true. Your father," and here he smirked at me, "was known for his dalliances. There was even a rumor that he and my beloved sister in law were..engaged in an unholy relationship. I will see soon enough if you are worthy of your families' reputation.." He reached out and cupped my unbound breast.

I did have hot Spanish blood, and rage made me react without thinking. My palm ached from the slap to his face and he jerked back from the blow, which left him wide eyed with astonishment. Anger followed hard and his face flushed purple, disguising the mark of my hand.

"Prioress!" He thundered, and the woman who I had not known to be in the house hurried in with her robes flapping. "See that this impudent girl is placed in the cell that is used for confinement. She needs to reflect on her transgressions."

The prioress grabbed me roughly by the arm and hauled me from the room, all the while hissing at me under her breath. "Ha, I knew you were to be his latest little trophy, his whore masquerading in the robes of a nun. You pay for this later, you little slut." To stop her would have helped my predicament not at all for more sisters with hard eyes waited to see me confined. I meekly allowed myself to be drug through the convent as though the sin was mine and confined in the small, airless room in the cellar.

It was to be rape then, I thought in despair as the door was closed and locked behind me. I had spurned the cardinal's advances and in repayment I was to be ravished. How long he must have been planning this, I thought in despair. It had been before my arrival that the underground passage which ran from this room to a small building outside the wall had been constructed which would allow for the safe egress of the sister's in the face of danger. The cardinal had financed the construction himself, citing his deep concern for the sisters of our order who had so often faced brutality in the wars which ravaged the countryside. He surely possessed a key in addition to the one that hung from the abbess's belt.

I knelt on the cold stones steps of the cell and prayed, lifting my heart to God and asking for his mercy. He had always provided succor to me in the darkness, but this night peace eluded me. I waited for the Cardinal and every moment my terror and anger grew until it felt as though a raging inferno was lodged in my chest. The cardinal would attempt me, and I would fight him off for there was no possibility that I would allow such a vile creature to steal that which I had saved for God. The way from this cell already seemed writ in stone, and for me it would end at the pyre if I killed him.

The noise of stones shifting roused me from reverie, and I pressed myself into a corner with hands clutching knives concealed by my gray robes. Blood pounded in my ears as I waited for the Cardinal to emerge but was instead it was Brother Peter who stooped low as he entered the room clutching a candle that turned his hair into a fall of dark fire. I sheathed the knife and clapped a hand to my mouth to smother a cry of relief.

He smiled at me, and placed the candle on the floor. He motioned me forward until I sat next to him, back against the wall. He took my hand and smiled.

"He will not come for you. I have made certain of it." Peter said.

I covered my mouth with my hand to contain a sob. "How?" I whispered.

Peter smiled bitterly. "His eminence is a hedonist, loving all of the finer pleasures in life. He dined too richly on lobsters this night though, and the purgative he used to cleanse his stomach was very strongly mixed. He is currently confined to his bed with a pot, and shall not trouble you this night or for many nights to come."

It was difficult to contain my laugh but I did so. We laughed silently together, shoulders shaking with mirth.

"Why have you done this for me?" I asked. "You risk..much." Had he been caught at this gallantry his life would have been forfeit.

Despite his laughter Brother Peter's eyes were sad. "You have been his obsession since he first beheld you, Lucia, a beautiful girl with the face of the one he desires above all else. He found me similarly appealing when I was a boy and used me...unspeakably. I would not have him tarnish your light, Lucia. You shine with the radiance like the sun." He brushed the tears that I not felt slipping down my face with gentle fingers.

We were so close that I cannot say which of us moved forward first, only that we were two lost souls in a small pool of light, and the touch of his mouth was the only thing that kept the darkness at bay. It started gentle, the movement of his lips upon mine. We explored one another tenderly and I learned the texture of his lips, and the overwhelming sweetness of his mouth. This was what drove them, and this, I marveled, stunned by the racing heat as our bodies caught and strained for one another. He gave me his tongue and I took it, and they danced together, first in my mouth and then in his and it was firm and delicious, as was the body that pressed against mine. His hands moved, finding the softness of my skin beneath my robes and he tended to me until I was overtaken with the sweetest pleasure I had ever known and he had to muffle the sound of my cries with his lips. I would have allowed him to take me there, I think, for there was no resistance in my mind or heart. If my maidenhead was forfeit how much better to give it lovingly, of my own volition.

"I must return, Lucia." He murmured in my ear. We rested on a pile of discarded wool and I thought that without his warmth I would wither and die like a flower which had bloomed too early in the spring. I shook my head in denial, and brought his mouth back to mine. "I must." He insisted.

"Stay with me." I said and moved my lips over his chest.

"I cannot." And he drank the salt of my tears with his kisses. Peter stood and pulled his robe back over his body. "Do not let him despoil you, Lucia. Fight him, by whatever means you have at your disposal." He touched the knives that he had discovered during his explorations. "Already he hides the marks of the dread disease that is the scourge of our land. I would not see you thus afflicted."

"The pox?" I whispered.

Peter nodded. "Which means.. that I might be similarly marked soon, for he still uses me as his whore when the mood takes him." He said with an expression of abject misery. He looked to the open passage. "I must be gone. Remember me, beautiful, light filled Lucia, as I shall remember you all of the days that are left to me." We parted with one last kiss and I tasted him deeply, afraid that I would soon forget the honey of his lips and the feel of his body pressing into mine. The night swallowed him as he returned under the ground, back to the service of the man who had destroyed him.

Sister Lucia laughed when Marietta crossed the room and took a long draft of wine directly from the jug. Marietta drank, breathed, and then drank still more until the pleasant warmth from the wine dispelled the raging heat from the elderly nun's tale. She motioned for Sister Lucia to continue and took another deep draft.

"Peter was right. The Cardinal did not trouble me again during that visit, which was mercifully short due to ill health and the war that split the brothers of the d'Este family kept him from returning for many years. It was only after the death of my mother Lucrezia that he sought another private audience.

"For my part although yet a virgin I was far from the innocent girl that I had previously been. After I was released from the cell I began to visit Sister Agnes during the night and found much joy in our relationship." Sister Lucia said, smiling at the memory." There is a particular delight in the touch of another woman's flesh for she knows instantly, without having to be told, all of the things that most delight our bodies. The softness of the caress, the gliding pressure from lips that are as soft as your own. Sister Agnes and I blended our voices in harmony that night, and never have I sang more sweetly then under the touch of her hands."

Marietta used her hand to fan her flushed cheeks as Lucia reached into the box and removed the two pearl rings and drawings of Cesare and Lucrezia Borgia. "The next time I was summoned from the convent it was by my mother, to tell me that Lucrezia Borgia was dying.


	6. Chapter 6

"Lucrezia Borgia was dying."

Sister Maria Lucia spoke the words in a whisper as she caressed the two ornate golden rings that rested in her gnarled hand.

"The melody of my parent's lives had played like a chord of distant music during my life, plaintive and sad as a swan that had lost it's mate. The father that I never knew who was so loved by the man that had taken his place. And my mothers. Theirs was a bond stronger than service or even friendship, and I did not understand it until I saw them together in Ferrara as the Duchess lay dying."

Sister Maria Lucia's eyes were full of tears in the dim light of the cell. The elements seemed to share the emotions of the elderly nun. The wind howled outside and the sound of pounding rain echoed against the glass of the window. Marietta shivered at the unearthly sound.

"Often have I thought that these rings were very like those who wore them. Encased in gold, precious, and the mirror image of one other. Place these rings in my hand, good Sister, before I am placed in the earth. I would know that they rest close to my heart."

O

The arrival of my mother to the convent came only days before I was to take my final vows and already I had begun my preparation. The weight of my hair burned under the veil, and I was conscious of my impending marriage to Christ with every step or intake of breath. One of the other sister's brought me from my isolation and I spoke to my mother for the first time in years through the gate that protected us from the outside world.

A special dispensation from the Cardinal had been granted that would allow me to journey to Ferrara but my mother, as was her custom, allowed me the choice. I could remain on the path I had followed for most of my life and become a bride of Christ without ever seeing the face of the woman who gave me life or I could accompany the party on route to Ferrara. I could see the desperate plea in my mother's face. I had been given into her charge and now a final presentation was due, the last time for her beloved mistress to see her life's work brought to fruition. I would have made the journey if it had meant my life, if only to grant the request of the woman who had loved me as her own child.

I had a great thirst for news of my home and we conversed the entirety of the journey. After the years spent at the convent I had begun to look back upon my childhood as a dying man thinks of heaven, the beauty of the land and the happiness that have become gilded with time and the benevolence of happy memories. And, in truth, the actions of the Cardinal three years before had planted a seed of unrest in my heart."

Marietta looked at the nun. "Did you experience a loss of your vocation?' The words, although mild, held a challenging overtone. To one without a true vocation, forced to enter the church, the doubts of the holy rang like vindication.

Sister Maria Lucia chuckled. "Claws, my sister?" She teased, and Marietta flushed with shame that her spite would be so readily apparent.

"I beg your forgiveness, Holy Sister."

"It is well that you should challenge me, Sister Maria Christina. I had been touched by God's most blessed promise and knew myself to be dedicated to his purpose but the actions of men threw my dedication into doubt." Sister Lucia plucked at the blanket covering her chest and her face twisted in a rictus of sadness.

"How can I explain to you the church at the time, so many years before Trent or even your own birth? As is still common most did not enter the church because of an overabundance of faith or a need to serve God. Girls were forced to enter by their families. Men took the cloth secure in the knowledge that they could garner wealth and power in the Church and not have to sacrifice as our Lord demands. Of all the servants of God only a small portion entered because of true purpose and it shriveled my own faith until it felt like a dying ember in my chest. The church had become a vestment embroidered with golden thread and decked with precious jewels thrown into a sty with swine. My church, my beautiful church had been corrupted by men, my family most of all, and the idea that I would succumb to its wiles and abandon my holy purpose haunted me."

"And yet you remained, and would have taken your final vows."

"Yes." Sister Lucia laughed a short, bitter laugh. "None of my disillusion was apparent on that journey, for I wished to spare them the pain of my doubts."

"My mother Elizabetta and I talked for hours on the journey to Ferrara. She told me of my father who still tended to his vines but spent many hours teaching my brother Nico the way of the blade.

"Nico shall be the most accomplished of our family." She whispered to me, full of fierce price. "Already he can best your father with knives. And cunning! He learns languages and strategy from his tutors as easily as some men breathe! It is as if he were also a Borgia."

"Are you perfectly sure that he is not, my mother? There is ever a softness in your voice when you speak of Valentino." I spoke in jest and was not prepared for the ruby flush that stained my mother's cheeks.

"None of the Borgia family possessed the red hair that flames on your brother's head." She retorted, trying to suppress a smile and I knew that my mother had taken at least one of the Borgia family to bed.

"Marietta, attempt to control yourself or I shall never finish my tale."

My mother spoke of the simple joys of life in the Villa, the bread that she had burned in the oven and how it had filled the courtyard with smoke, the delights of being surrounded by the children of our family, and the hilarity of seeing my father tending to the bees he had lately acquired. There were small marks of age on her face but she seemed unchanged to me, a slim, upright figure with luminous dark eyes and the speed of a striking snake. A longing to return to my home filled me, and a thousand times on that journey I almost spoke the words that would have freed me from the bonds of my vocation.

We arrived in Ferrara and were greeted by the Duke, who had learned the secret of my true parentage. For a moment I thought that my mother would end him but Duke Alfonso seemed content to let my existence remain a secret, even from the brother he attempted to pander for.

One forms an image of absent parents. The holy light of memory shines upon them, endowing them with impossible beauty. In my mind Lucrezia Borgia was a Madonna robed in blue holding the infant Christ. She proved to be far more mundane, an older woman with graying hair sinking into the abyss. The golden beauty that I had been told of had burned away and she lay guttering like a candle in a pool of wax. Beauty still resided in her face, and I could see myself in her features, but it had been overlain with the most profound sadness I had yet encountered.

My disquiet was mirrored on the dying face of Lucrezia Borgia. I was the child of Cesare Borgia and his features were strongly viable in my youthful face. To see him again must have been as much a torment as a benediction.

I shall not relay the whole of our conversation, for there are some secrets too precious to reveal. The chest wherein I have placed my heart and my memories was given to me by the Duchess, my mother, along with several of the treasures it contains. While we did not see her ending I know that the woman who gave birth to me died in the fullness of grace, having repented of her sins and been forgiven. Ippolitpo D' Este heard her confession, and the look on his face after leaving her chamber filled me with disquiet. I could see my own fate in his eyes. Now that he knew my true parentage the hunger to have me stalked his mind like a ravaging wolf."

"Bring me the candle."

Marietta brought the candle and set it on the bare floor. Sister Lucia unfurled the pages and looked at them lovingly. The portrait of Lucrezia Borgia met the flames first, and Sister Lucia held the page until the fire touched her skin.

"Sister, you shall burn yourself." Marietta cautioned. Sister Maria Lucia shook her head.

"The wounds from these letters healed long ago."

The drawing of Valentino she held longer, lovingly stroking her finger down the page. "The handsomest of men. They were so similar, so full of lightness and dark that they could only ever find an equal in each other." Sister Lucia looked up and smiled through her tears. "The gilded memory of my parents has returned now, and I see them together. He rode through the night on a black horse and he meets her, his beloved, and their long time of separation has passed. This I know, I feel the truth of it in my heart. I know it as surely as I know that my beloved waits for me and I shall smell the tang of salt on his skin again and feel his lips in my hair before the dawn." She touched the drawing to the fire.

Marietta longed to snatch the page from the fire.

"Their private letters, seen by no eyes but my own." Sister Lucia set each page ablaze tears ran down her cheeks.

"You will not share them with me?" Marietta pleaded.

"No, my child. These letters played a wild song on my heart and I would spare you that burden."

The letters were a crumpled heap of ash on the stone floor. Sister Maria Lucia swept the feathery remnants of forbidden passion from her bed with a hand and Marietta saw, on the floor, a solitary fragment of a letter that had escaped the conflagration. She covered the fragment with her foot and resolved to retrieve it at the first opportunity.

Sister Maria Lucia felt through the box until she located the smallest of the objects she had yet displayed: a small length of twisted rope dark brown with age.

"The next time that I saw my mother and father I waited to be burned in the pyre."


	7. Chapter 7

Author's Note- Sadi- For goodness sake get an account or send me your email so we can talk. I would love to have you read my book when its had a few more revisions.

"I waited to be burned in the pyre."

Marietta held up her hands. "Sister, I pray that you will allow me to attend to the functions of my body before you begin this tale."

Sister Maria Lucia bowed her head gravely and closed her eyes. "I shall rest for a moment, then. The night presses upon me."

In a lightening movement Marietta bent down and retrieved the singed piece of paper that had escaped the flames. Crumpled in her hand, it felt warm as though the passion of the lovers burned with a flame that had not been quenched by death and time. With trembling hands she ran to the chapel where candles burned throughout the night surrounding the statue of the Blessed Virgin. The blue eyes of the statue seemed to stare accusingly at Marietta from her marble plinth, Mary, ever Virgin, who had never known the touch of a man.

The ink on the parchment had faded but the script of the author remained bold, colored with ferocious intelligence and determination. The man that wrote this would have created a new world, Marietta thought reverently, and ruled it as Prince.

"I am unable to forget a moment spent in your arms. Such is the nature of my punishment that having despoiled your innocence I am ever condemned to dream of the honey of your lips and the feel of your curls beneath my hand as we moved together. Could someone sever the chain of the affliction that ties me to you with unbreakable bonds I would give them half my wealth and then slay them, for they ripped the soul from my chest."

Marietta gasped and read the fragment again and again until the words became branded in her mind. Love, she thought. Not lust or the blandishments of the evil one. Love.

Marietta returned to Sister Maria Lucia's cell and closed the door gently. The woman lay on the bed and the flickering candle turned her face into a mask of death. No breath stirred the fragile chest and with an inarticulate cry Marietta threw herself at the cot. "Sister!" She cried with horror that the venerable woman might have slipped into oblivion while she tarried in the chapel.

Sister Maria Lucia opened her eyes slowly and regarded Marietta with humor twinkling in her eyes.

"Which letter escaped the flames?"

Marietta sighed and produced the fragment she had tucked into her sleeve. "How did you know, Holy Sister?"

Sister Maria Lucia chuckled. "For all that you have heard my story you truly do not understand. Stealth was instilled in me by the greatest assassins of the age. Were I to miss one clumsy girl the ghost of Micheletto de Corella would rise up and take me to my rest before I could further shame him." Sister Lucia brought the letter near the candle and read the words. "This was his last letter, written only hours before his death. The page that brought my mother his sword said that Valentino awoke in the night with a cry and spent hours writing to her that should have been spent in sleep. A reckless charge took him far from the safety of the armies of Navarre and ended his suffering." Sister Lucia handed the letter back to Marietta. "Do with it as you will."

The opportunity to decide for herself the fate of the fragile parchment stunned Marietta. In the entirety of her life she had never been allowed a choice and it exploded in her mind with the light of a thousand Chinese flowers. With trembling fingers Marietta pulled the veil from her head, disappearing into the folds for a moment before emerging like a newly hatched chick. She fluffed the short hair matted to her scalp and smiled blindingly at the other woman as she touched the scrap to the flames and watched it be consumed. "It belongs with them." She said, crying happy tears as she watched the ashes fall to the floor with its brethren. "Thank you, sister."

Sister Maria Lucia squeezed Marietta's hand as she continued her story.

"I waited to be burned in the pyre for my attack on Cardinal d'Este." Sister Lucia's face was cold. "It was said that he died because of indigestion brought on by eating too many lobsters." She laughed bitterly. "That is far from the truth. There are many things that I regret in my long life, Marietta, but the vengeance I brought down upon that dreadful man is not one of them."

I left Ferrara with a heavy heart, beset by grief for the Duchess and uncertainty. My mother bid me farewell at the gate of the convent, unknowing that I harbored serious misgivings about my vocation. Instead of affirming my dedication venturing back into the world had reminded me poignantly of all that I would lose. I read through the letters given to me by my mother and I burned. The passion that was my families birthright had sprung fully formed inside my chest and my dedication to their redemption was as insubstantial as smoke in the wind when compared to the overwhelming emotions that reeked havoc on my body.

When I returned to the convent it seemed as though I was a ghost wandering the halls, for my presence was scarcely acknowledged by the sisters. I no longer shared chambers with the other novitiates and the duties that customarily filled those hours not devoted to prayer were forbidden. Later I understood that my isolation was only the prelude to the greater desecration planned with the full knowledge of the prioress. This all became plain to me the day I was taken from my solitary cell and escorted to the gatehouse outside the walls where the Cardinal waited for me in his bedchamber.

He motioned me to a low bench and I was forced to kneel by two large men with stern, unforgiving faces.

"Bind her hands." The Cardinal said, handing a silken cord to the guards. My hands were loosely tied behind my back. The instant his guards left the room I began twisting my wrists, trying to loosen the rope enough to reach the blade strapped to my forearm.

"Lucia Borgia." He drawled out, turning my name into the hiss of a serpent. "Daughter of Cesare and Lucrezia Borgia, on her knees at last." He brought a small jeweled dagger to where I knelt and began cutting at my garments until my naked breasts and womanly parts were exposed to his eyes. The soft light of the candles that could not disguise the marks of his disease, ill concealed by a thick layer of paint.

"Beautiful." He murmured, eyes sliding down my body. "Like my dear sister. I should have taken you as a child, Lucia, and trained you to service me. Now only a short time remains until your bloom will fade."

I had retrieved the blade and my hands were free but I stayed in a submissive posture. My father's lessons beat in my ears and I looked frantically about for a means of escape. None existed. The solitary window was covered by a heavy grate and through the door I could hear the quiet rustlings of the cardinal's guard, who would not intercede while their master raped a servant of God. Any attack on the cardinal would result in my death. I attempted supplication, an appeal to his better nature. "Your Eminence, I humbly beseech you to leave me in peace. I am chaste and promised to God. Allow me to return to my cell."

The cardinal's heavy face twisted. He stalked over to where I knelt and jerked the wimple from my head, pulling at my bound hair. "You want to return to your cell." He arranged my hair until it fell around my body like a honey colored robe. "What could a girl like you know of want." With clawed hands he tore the remains of my robe from my body until I stood before him as I had slid from my mother's womb.

"Let me explain want to you, Lucia Borgia. Want is seeing your mother, that infamous whore, given in marriage to my lout of a brother knowing it was only through a mischance of birth that she was not mine. Want is nurturing her trust for years, biding my time, befriending her, guiding her and still having my affections spurned by a woman who gave herself to others like a common market slut. Want.." And here he leaned close to my ear. I could smell his scent, the stench of unwash and decay covered with a heavy perfume. "Want is knowing you are her daughter and can not escape me again. I will teach you much about want, Lucia Borgia."

I lashed out at him with words as temper loosened my tongue. "I doubt you posses the vigor to teach me, your Eminence, considering your perverse fascination with young boys."

"Oh yes, dear Peter." The cardinal laughed, a deep, resonate laugh that sounded like music. "I had forgotten that you knew of him. He told me of your interlude together."

Ice drove a shard into my heart. "He told you nothing."

The Cardinal laughed again and the sound was disarming for his curiously accented voice hinted at a beautiful, rich singing voice. "His plot to poison me was foiled by one of my guards and under torture he confessed all. How he had found you in the arms of another nun and you bribed him to silence. After my torturer played with him Peter offered to service me once more in return for a quick death. I confess that he was never sweeter than after being embraced by the rack."

The depths of Peter's sacrifice stunned me. He had kept my secrets even under torture. Peter, who had rescued me from the Cardinal. Peter, who had preserved my innocence ever as I offered myself to him. Another image filled my mind until my wrath became that of an avenging angel: Peter, bloody from torture being forced to submit to this man once more.

When the guards pulled my naked body off the Cardinal I had already deprived him of an eye and the essence of his masculinity. The bloody globe of his eye proved far larger. I was placed in a cell in the bowels of the convent to wait for my death for the prioress had proclaimed me a witch and I was to be burnt.

Cardinal d' Este's screams were audible even in the stone cell where I waited for the flames and they warmed me. He could not be moved and my pyre was to be in full view of his convalescent bed. Silence and despair enveloped me. The faith that had been the bedrock of my life was shattered and its remnants formed a smoking ruin around my mind. My father fell unshriven in battle and I would do the same and not disgrace the Borgia name. I would scream Ippolito d'Este's crimes as my body burned and call down a curse upon him for killing a virgin promised to God.

The night before I was to meet the flames I was awakened by a rattle as my cell door swung open. I lay in the corner like a feral animal, having been kept naked and fed only enough to ensure that starvation did not end my life. When my Mother and Father entered the cell dragging the Prioress and an unmoving body with long light brown hair it seemed as though my mind must have descended into darkness, for their appearance was an impossibility.

My mother hissed when she saw me, and her arm dealt the prioress a fierce blow that sent the woman's head into the stone wall of the convent. She crumpled to the floor and remained there next to the corpse, a puddle of dark fabric and hate that did not stir again. My mother wrapped me in a dark cloak and then her arms.

"How?" I gasped in a low whisper, for my lips were cracked with thirst. For thirteen days I had remained thus entombed, and the flesh had melted from my bones as hope had melted from my heart.

My father answered. "A nun sent word to your cousin who watches over you from the village.

"Vitello?"

"Yes. He rode three horses to the ground to bring us word. I have been making ready here while your mother brought another who waits for us."

"How are we to leave?" I asked.

My father smiled. "Through the door. The convent sleeps very deeply tonight. Some may never stir again."

We walked out of the convent in the darkest part of the night and I was taken to a small cottage where a crackling fire illuminated the face of my brother Nico, who stood with a knife against the throat of a seated man with a sack tied over his head. Nico's red hair gleamed in soft curls, beautiful in the light, and his face had become my Father's. His attention and the blade never wavered.

"Conceal yourself." My father said to Nico, and he melted into the shadows after a quick smile. With a rough jerk Micheletto pulled the sack off the figure's head and I recognized the unmistakable face of Alfonso, Duke of Ferrara.

"What is this?" The Duke roared, and then he focused on my mother with a terrible expression. "You whore!" My father brought the knife back to the Duke's throat and a thin trickle of blood slid down the massive throat, creating a winding red river that flowed into a fur collar.

The Duke saw me on the floor. "You." He hissed. He looked at my father and I could see him struggle to control his temper, to use reason.

"What do you wish of me? Had you wished my death you could easily have accomplished it without this journey. My late wife's little whore there," he gestured to my mother "could have slit my throat as I rode her. Therefore you must want something of me."

"My lady wife, did you fuck him?" My father asked quietly.

My mother straightened and faced Micheletto, who watched her with an inscrutable expression. "Yes. It seemed the most expeditious way of ensuring that we were left alone. And he proved less difficult to subdue afterward. "

"By all the gods I love you, woman." He said seriously.

Mother colored. "I know that you do."

The Duke looked to me. "Is there anyone in this blasted family that is not fucking one another? How many of them have you bedded, little nun? My brother could not have been too great a burden. "

My father crossed to the Duke and dealt him a massive blow that toppled him backwards in the chair. He leaned on the Duke's chest, pressing into him until breath wheezed out and brought the knife to the Duke's face. He rested the blade on the delicate skin under his eye and said in the coldest voice I have ever heard, "Say one more word against my daughter and I shall take your eyes as she took your brother's."

"You would not dare." The Duke blustered.

Death's own smile could have been no more vicious than my fathers. "I am Micheletto de Corella. For the love of this family I have killed Kings and Cardinals, and laid waste to half of Italy with my master. I would kill you and get more pleasure from it then my lady wife received in your bed."

"What would you have of me?" The Duke asked, and he was defeated. I told the Duke the extent of his brother's treachery and perversion. The Duke had reason to suspect the treachery of his siblings and after swearing upon a holy relic that I retained my virginity he agreed to help me escape as a final gift to the memory of his wife.

The arrangements for my escape had been made with care. The corpse that my father left in the cell was burned the next morning with great rejoicing. A new prioress was shortly elected but the convent settled into obscurity soon after, for it was never able to recover from the deaths brought about in a single night. Cardinal d'Este returned to Ferrara with his brother in a covered litter that concealed his disfigurement. The dark cloud of a witch's pyre spiraled into the sky as I rode swiftly across the mountains to the villa by the sea.

Peace did not return to me, even ensconced in the home of my childhood. The Cardinal clung to life like a maggot and I would see him dead before I could rest.

"Do you still serve the Borgia family?" I demanded of my father. My hair had been colored dark to conceal my identity when we fled and cut so that curls rioted around my face. No longer was I Lucia de Corella or even Lucia Borgia. I was the daughter of Cesare Borgia and his fierce dark spirit burned inside of me.

"Until my dying breath."

"I would have the Cardinal dead, Father. I would have him suffer as Peter suffered. As I have suffered." We stood together in the dank cellar which smelled of wine and mold. I pulled the loose gown from my shoulders and stood naked before him. He wept at the scars that striped my back, the marks of the lash used to torture me for a confession. The bruises from their beatings had faded, leaving only faint purple smudges that shadowed the entirety of my starved body. Unspeakable acts had been forced upon me by the Cardinals guard and I told my father of each degradation.

"Kill him for me, Father."

Micheletto sank to his knees. "My lady."

Had there been tears left in my heart I would have shed them for the look of fierce pride and love on his face. My father killed Ippolito d'Este with cantarella, a lingering, cruel death that satisfied my need for blood. When he returned from Ferrara it became obvious that my vengeance would be Micheletto de Corella's final act as an assassin. He died when the vines had just begun to swell with grapes and they hung heavy in the sunshine. The wine from that year proved surprisingly sweet, flavored with the tears of the family that mourned him. I stayed long enough to see him buried before leaving for France."

"Why France, good Sister?"

"I traveled to the home of Charlotte d Albert, the wife of my father."


	8. Chapter 8

"I traveled to the home of Charlotte d' Albert, the wife of my father."

Marietta waited for Sister Maria Lucia to continue, a thousand questions on her lips, until finally the press of them became too much. "Sister?" She asked tremulously, not wanted to interrupt the flow of the story with her inopportune queries. "I seek clarification on one matter before you begin the next part of your tale."

"What matter?"

"Your..virginity." Marietta hesitated. "You spoke of suffered degradations at the hands of the soldiers and yet.."

Lucia chuckled, a dry, rasping sound devoid of the humor that had accompanied her earlier laughter. "Did I swear a false oath on a Holy Relic? No sister, I yet retained my virginity. Having denied him the Cardinal forbade his guards from despoiling me in that matter, for he preferred that I meet the flames a maiden. Count yourself as fortunate that the other ways a woman can be abused remain a mystery."

Marietta bowed her head in shame that she had broached a subject so painful to the sister. Unconsciously her hands slipped to the rosary fastened at her waist and she fingered the beads, hearing again her mother's gentle voice, rebuking her for an inquisitive nature.

The sister's eyes shifted to the rosary and her head turned, cocked like an inquisitive bird. Marietta sought to fill the silence, to give the sister a chance to rest her steadily weakening voice. "It was my mother's." She whispered, stroking her hands along the polished wood interspersed with tiny golden beads. "I learned the rosary at her feet, and a love of God that has never left me despite my rage at confinement." Sister Lucia held out her hand, and Marietta placed the rosary in her palm. She examined it, lingering over the simple golden cross, and a smile played about withered lips.

"Tell me of your mother." Sister Maria Lucia asked.

Taken aback, Marietta's voice faltered. "My m-mother, sister? Her story, as does my own, lacks the color of your tale." Please continue, Sister, Marietta silently begged, before the creeping dawn comes. Somewhere in the course of the night she had accepted the sister's belief that death would visit them soon, and to be left without having heard the complete tale seemed a fate worse than death.

"Nevertheless I would hear it. You must have learned kindness from your mother, for there is a gentleness about you."

Marietta unlocked the dark storehouse of thought where the memories of her mother resided. "She was very kind, although sad, as though life had dealt her some blow from which she never recovered. And beautiful! Her hair had the red lights of the heath and her eyes were blue jewels. I have the misfortunate to resemble my father, and on a female child his features are far less pleasing."

"You may dislike your looks, my young sister, but your features, though somewhat harsh, are not displeasing." Marietta's heart glowed like a coal at the kindness. "I thank you, Sister. My birth had gone poorly, and the midwife advised her to never again have children. Eventually she relented, though, allowing my father to return to her bed, and the boy child that she delivered stole her wits with its solitary breath."

"And your father?"

Marietta unclenched her jaw and tried to present an accurate portrait of her sire. "A proud man. Handsome, but overly concerned with his importance as a member of the d' Este. The funeral meats had scarcely cooled before he married again, and my place at this convent became the final act that banished the mistake that was his marriage to my mother from his life."

Sister Maria patted Marietta's hand solicitously and curled her fingers around the rosary. "Families are unfailingly complicated, my dear. If nothing else my tale should have taught you as much. But I digress, and the night grows short. I would finish this tale before my final slumber."

"What item shall I remove, Sister?"

"The cross, Marietta. It is the mark of my greatest crime, that having found love I spurned it, and planted the seed of madness in the heart of one who had never been denied. Give me a sip of wine, sister, for this part of my tale is long.

The bonds of family had encircled me in a loving embrace for the entirety of my life, sheltering and guiding me through the storm. The death of Micheletto, my father and protector, severed the last link that had bound me to the villa, and I felt myself adrift in a world where my place was no longer assured. Despite my mother's protestations I determined to leave Grosetto. The memories and reach of the d' Este were long and my presence there placed them in danger. So after my father's funeral I humbled myself before the Duke and begged him, for love of his late wife, to find me a place where I could live with honor away from the shores of my home. I traveled to France, to the home of Charlotte d''Albret, the wife of my father for my mother had reason to believe that the Duchess would look kindly upon my arrival. She wept as I left, but in her eyes I saw the acceptance and pride that my damaged heart so badly needed.

In those days the interests of Ferrara and France were closely aligned, and members of his court frequently made the short voyage. I traveled with a courtier who had a message for the king and his party left me at the gates of the Chateau of La Motte-Feuilly, one of the properties that had come to the Duchess after her marriage. Only after I inquired at the gatehouse did I learn that my father's wife had been dead for a number of years and my sister Louise now reigned there as Duchess.

The Duke, of course, knew this. I was a debt on his honor that he must repay, but I had attacked his family and must be punished. So instead of being allowed to find some place in a convent the letter I bore from the Duke named me as a cousin of his wife seeking asylum from her misdeeds. Bah!" Sister Maria Lucia laughed derisively. "Louise showed me the letter when I was brought before her by the guards.

An air of great sadness hung about the place, which seemed to me to be on the crossroads of an ancient fortress and a splendid home. Made of massive gray stones and possessing both square and rounded towers, it stood on a small rise that dominated the surrounding fields . The room the guards showed me to was large and richly appointed, with a roaring fire that banished the chill of the thick walls, and seated at a large table covered with ledgers was the small figure of Louise, the Duchess of Valentinois. She did not look up at my approach, only motioned me to a chair. I examined her minutely, seeking some sign of our common heritage. The Duchess had dark curling hair, a strong jaw, and, when she finally looked at me, the same green and gold eyes I had seen in my mirror a thousand times. She motioned me to speak. I introduced myself as Lucia de Corella, a distant cousin of the Duchess, and handed her the sealed letter from the Duke.

After many moments she looked at me and laughed.

"A Borgia cousin, eh?" She said in flawless Italian. "I think this remarkable letter contains not a single truth. Who are you, truly?"

"Lucia de Corella, who is sometimes known as Lucia Borgia." Something about this woman frightened me and I spoke with great care. In her eyes I could read all the intelligence and ruthlessness that seemed to characterize the members of my family.

"You are one of my father's bastards, I think. Perhaps the one that was to be a nun?"

I sprang to my feet and but for the closed door I would have fled into the night, for the beasts that stalked that land could be no more frightening than this woman. She watched me with a smile that was like a blow to the face, for this was mine as well.

"Sit down, Lucia. I mean you no harm but I will not tolerate lies." Her voice softened, becoming less imperious. "My lady mother maintained a correspondence with the Duchess of Ferrara, and for love of my late father they agreed to help a child of his heart if the need should arise. You are she?"

I nodded.

"And your mother?" I set my jaw and returned her stare. No power that she commanded would force me to divulge anything that could be used against them.

The Duchess spindled the letter and tapped it against her chin, contemplating her next course of action.

"What do you wish of me? The Duke seems to believe I should find some mean situation for you, which makes me wonder why he arranged your journey here at all. Had he wished to imprison you he could easily have done so. This..." And she waved the paper before me "speaks of hidden things, and I do not trust that fat bastard in Ferrara!"

At her words a shocked chuckle escaped me, and when she smiled in return the mask that was her face slipped, allowing me to see a girl only a little older than myself, eternally surrounded by those who sought to manipulate her youth and gender.

"Did you meet..our father?" Louise asked hesitantly, and the yearning shown through for a moment. She hungered for family as I hungered for freedom and a place where I could heal.

"I did, although I was very young." I told my sister, and I recognized the flash of blazing excitement in her eyes for they were the twin to my own. "And I was raised by ones who knew and loved him more than life." I offered the story to Louise, that she might share it and come to know the man who had fathered us. Her pain at the loss of her family was mine as well, a shared bond stronger than blood. My words came hesitantly at first, telling her of my childhood, my entry into the convent, and an edited account of the events that had driven me from Grosetto. She drank them in like a starved creature, calling for wine and bread, and in the course of telling my tale I came to know something of her. For all her wealth and power there was no one she loved, no one she trusted. Her mother had died years ago, her husband was an absent, much older stranger. She had no child.

When the candles had burned until they were no more than puddles of wax Louise took my hand and led me to a chamber next to her own. "I know much of being the Duchess. My mother prepared me for it from my earliest days. But I know little of being a Borgia. Stay, Lucia, and teach me." Her cheek, untouched by the sun or labor, felt of velvet next to mine as we embraced. From that moment we became sisters in truth, and she the dearest friend I have ever known.

We drank the cellar dry those first few days, talking late into the night. Louise delighted in showering me with costly gowns and jewels that she no longer favored and soon I bore little resemblance to the waif nearly burned at the stake. We giggled together like young girls, raced fine horses through the desolate fields surrounding the chateau until purple mountains loomed in the distance, and whispered of love and lovers. I told her the story of Peter, and she told me of taking a young man with splendid muscles to her bed when her husband left on endless military campaigns. The only thing I concealed from her was the name of my mother, although in time I saw that she had guessed the truth of that as well.

Ten days after my arrival a messenger came from my ladies husband, Louis de la Tremoille, and the household descended into an uproar all made ready for a journey to Calais. The king of France sought to ally with the king of England against the Holy Roman Emperor, and their meeting was to be a moment of unparalleled pageantry and spectacle. I traveled in a wagon beside my sister as her attendant and the miles to the coast flew by as I drank in the air that was France. It had seemed to me to be a cold, misty land, for my skin was accustomed to the warmth of the sun on the water but I grew to love the deeper green of the hills and the tiny wildflowers that danced in the wind along the ancient roads where we traveled.

The journey also showed the great care my loved ones had taken to shelter me from the harshness of life. Families on the verge of starvation begged at each town and village. Girls no older than ten offered themselves to soldiers in return for bread and the toll of a century of war shown everywhere in missing limbs and terrible scars. I could not even offer those poor souls prayer for the faith that had sustained me no longer flourished in my breast. Plague had returned, and our party crossed through a land where death stalked like a starving wolf, a gray cloaked specter that swept erratically, leaving some villages intact while the corpses from another town could be seen stacked up like firewood.

When we had come near the destination we encountered a young man leading a weary horse ahead, and both limped as they picked their way through the rough gray stones. My sister called a halt so that she could speak to him despite the warnings of her guards. The fineness of his clothes marked him as the son of a prosperous family, and his words must have impressed my sister for she invited him to travel with us and to share in the light of our fires that night, for that part of the road crossed through an endless forest filled with bandits.

Despite the beds that had been made in the wagon sleep eluded me when we made camp, and the images of dead children piled into carts rolled through the chambers of my mind. I rose and returned to the fire, where the man from the road kept solitary watch. I could see that he was younger then I had thought, only recently come into manhood, and his strongly featured face was framed by dark, waving hair and lovely black eyes. They were sunk deep into their sockets and if secrets had voice those eyes would have sung like a choir. He smiled, and flirtation colored his melodious voice.

"Another restless soul, I see." He stirred the fire with a stick and a shower of flames shot upwards, illuminating his face and then falling to the earth. The air reeked of smoke and sweat, and I drank them in, for the sweet, rotten smell of purification hung in my nostrils. I settled myself across from him, decorously arranging my skirts and pretending not to notice the scrutiny that took in every nuance of my face and form.

"You are of the Duchess's family?" The man asked.

"Have I been introduced as such?" I challenged. My sister and I had agreed that we should conceal our familial relationship.

"You share a certain resemblance, my lady. The mark of a great family is stamped upon both of your faces."

I glared at the man, shocked. He merely smiled at me, serene, and reached into the bag behind him and retrieved a jug of what would prove to be wine. He offered it to me after taking a long swallow and I accepted, and drank deeply of the bitter, immature wine that lacked the savor of my father's vintage.

The man introduced himself as Michael, and between sips of wine he related that he had recently been a student at Avignon but the university had closed because of plague and now he wandered from place to place, seeking a treatment for the sickness.

"You must be a man that loves danger, to seek knowledge of that which has killed so many." I said.

"Death holds no fear for the righteous." And he smirked so lasciviously that I could not contain my laughter.

"You seem older than your story suggests." I told him, for despite his unlined face and teasing words the dark eyes were filled with anguish.

"My dreams have aged me a thousand years." He said with an irreverent tilt of the wine jug.

"What ghosts haunt your dreams?' I asked, for this was something I knew well. Each night since I had left the convent I had seen the faces of the Cardinal and his men and I feared they would never leave me.

"Death and war, war and death, the countless progression of lives lost through the ages." He said, and he turned in on himself, hunching his narrow shoulders, and I could see that the dreams that kept me from slumber were constant companions for him.

"Do you think that is what my life holds, only the promise of sadness and death?" I asked him. I could no longer imagine what my future would bring, so far from my home and the life I had set myself for. The convent still called to me like an abandoned child, and I its grieving mother.

Michael studied me, lips pursed into an enigmatic smile. "Your life will hold much of joy and sadness, Lucia, journeys and heartbreak and grand adventure. At the end of your days your mother will open her arms to you, and you will rest close to her."

The hairs on the back of my neck rose, for his words held the unmistakable ring of prophecy. "Are you a seer, sir, that you can reach through time and see the course of my life so clearly?"

Michael laughed. "Had I the gift of prophecy you can be assured I would take measures to conceal it. Burning seems a horrible death."

"I have often thought so." I said, and joined him in wine soaked laughter. "I am amazed that you would speak of these things, even in jest. The church does not take kindly to prophets or witches."

His smile grew enigmatic and mocking. "I think you have as little reason to trust the church as I, lady. But come, no more talk of sadness. Tell me of your life and I will tell you of the sights I have seen and together we will banish these phantasms of the night."

We spent hours talking, and by the time that the first fingers of rosy dawn began to brush the horizon we lay next to one another on the blanket, friends until the end of our lives, no matter that our paths would not cross again. Before the rest of the party arose he asked that I might bless him, an odd request it seemed. Michael brushed my forehead with his lips before we parted, and the feel of their warmth began to thaw the ice of my heart.

The next day saw our arrival in Arde, where the French court had assembled. To come to that place was to see the fever dream of an ancient prince. Even now, sixty years later, I can scarcely credit the splendor arrayed on that field, which had been leveled so that neither prince would possess an advantage in meeting. A temporary palace of illusion had been created out of wood with cloth and tapestry hanging from bars and cleverly painted to look like bricks. Rooms filled with glass gave the appearance of being outside and in the chambers of the English king colored glass filled the space with jeweled light. Thousands of pavilions crowded the field and they blazed with silk and cloth of gold and jewels. The men and women of the court wore their finest gowns and drank endlessly of spirits that flowed like water from fountains.

While my sister tended to her husband, a gruff, unpleasant man that I soon learned to avoid, I took a horse and rode until the press of too many men no longer invaded my mind. I knew that the sea was near, and I longed to smell the salt spray and feel the waves tickle my feet as they caressed the shore. I rode until the horse was flecked with foam and a shout interrupted my frantic flight. A party of hunters rode through the field. Far outpacing them a richly dressed man galloped on a magnificent white horse. The man rode recklessly, laughing in delight, and the sun glinted off his rose gold hair. He pulled the horse to a stop when he saw me and it reared in protest. He controlled the beast effortlessly, more centaur than man, and across the field our eyes meet with the sound of a blade striking a blade.

I have loved since then, loved so deeply and for so long that my heart no longer knew the ending of my soul and the beginning of his. And I have desired men since that moment. But never again did I experience the utter calamity of emotion that swept over me the first time his bright eyes found me, and I was left as helpless as a butterfly caught in a spider web. With that first glance I took in the entirety of his being. I could see the enormous strength of his body and the even greater vigor of his mind, which was filled with passion and faith, light and towering ambition. I could see his sensuality and his virtue. The Borgia heart that dwelt in my breast recognized in him a like spirit and it rose like a dove to greet him."

Sister Maria Lucia looked down, and Marietta was astonished to see tears flowing down her cheeks, making jeweled rivulets on her skin.

"Sister?' She said gently.

"It still pains me to think of him as he was then, so alive and full of goodness. I turned and galloped in the opposite direction for I had a presentiment of disaster if we should meet. I heard him shout and start to follow. Angels lent their speed to my flight, and it was only as I could see the French encampment that I dared to look back. Bent low over the horse's neck he was grinning and flushed, for I had become his quarry, and his face told me more clearly than words that he would search me out in the throng, no matter that I had escaped this time.

The next day I stood amid the French Court as Francis, the King, greeted his English counterpart and I recognized the man who had pursued me, the man whose fever bright eyes had invaded my mind and filled me with longings that I thought would never trouble me again. Henry, the eighth king of England to bear that name."

"Marietta. Marietta!"

Marietta had been struck utterly dumb, and it was many moments before she regained the use of her voice. "Him?" Her voice was a ragged whisper.

"Him. But give me another sip of wine Sister, and I will tell you how it came to be." Marietta brought the wine to the sister's lips. AS she supported the fragile head another part of the story came to her mind.

"The young man truly was a seer. The bones of your mother rest nearby." Marietta said, thinking of the chapel where the bones of Lucrezia Borgia rested next to her husband.

"Who can say if I would have returned but for the memory of that strange young man whispering in my ear. I believe he did possess the gift of prophecy, though. Many years later he gained fame as a seer, and served the Medici Queen. Nostradamus, he is called now. A strange name for a Jew."

Marietta shook her head, for the flood of revelations had left no room for more astonishment. "And the English king found you?"

"Yes, he found me."


	9. Chapter 9

"He found me."

The night after I earned the name of my pursuer on the field I was awakened from slumber by a shaking on my shoulder. Knives were clutched in my hand before I had fully awakened and only my sister's startled gasp as she felt the cold blade against her throat stopped my strike.

"Sister?" She asked, an unmistakable note of fear in her voice. I apologized for startling her and, recovered, she brushed my words aside.

"Leave your blades behind. We must attend the Queen."

The King and Queen were lodged a short distance away in Ardres while the majority of the court had joined the press of English on the field, erecting pavilions of lavish construction and materials. Embroidered with gold and silver, encrusted with jewels and held in place by poles topped with gilded heraldic beasts or crowns, the pavilions sparkled and danced in the gentle breezes of early June. Red and blue or green and white, standards with the golden fleur-de-lys and roses bloomed in a field that soon became awash in mud as thousands of feet and animals scared the green grass where butterflies and wildflowers had once been the only adornment.

The noise and my own turbulent thoughts had kept me from slumber, and it seemed that I only rested a moment before Louise shook me awake. With the assistance of her maids I shortly found myself outfitted in one of the gowns Louise had gifted to me, unadorned midnight blue that echoed the simple style I had become accustomed to in the convent. My sister kept her silence while the other women were in attendance but I could feel the press of infective against her lips and read anger in the rigid line of her shoulders. Only after the maids had been dismissed and we made our way through the warren of pavilions did I learn the reason for my sudden audience.

"That bastard husband of mine has been about his tricks again. One of the guards heard you sing as we traveled and told Louis of your beauty and lovely voice. He suggested to the king that you could perhaps soothe the queen during her restless nights." She wound her way through milling drunks in their finest garb and the leaping campfires that always seemed to be in danger of setting the entire place ablaze. The noise of that field was indescribable. Everywhere it assaulted the ears with the sounds of laughter and revelry and abandoned fornication conducted in the insufficient barrier of tents. The first day I had been dazzled by the magical sights and the richness of the display. Now I could only see the horror of it, that so much gold was being expended while children in the countryside starved.

My sister continued with her cursing. "That festering pile of shit. We are lucky that he did not suggest you as bed sport for our king while his wife is heavy with child. He is a great man but a selfish lover. Not as bad as my husband, certainly, for to lay with him is like being trampled by a rutting goat."

"Does your husband know you shared the king's bed?" I asked in shock.

Louise laughed, a throaty, sensual laugh that made her sound like the courtesan who had been our grandmother. "Know? He delivered me there himself." Louise continued, drawing her mouth close to my ear as we walked. "Above all else be wary of the Queen. The King is much concerned with living up to the ideals of his mother and tutors and he can be reasoned with, or, if all else fails, bedded and truly that is not too great an imposition. The Queen wishes only for the kingdom to be larger and richer then when her father was King and to have her son rule. She would sacrifice every one of us to achieve that goal and consider it her right to do so."

Horses waited to convey us to the chateau and upon our arrival we were shown to the royal bedchamber. I made my obeisance to the young Queen, who was sitting up in bed while maids massaged her lower back. Louise had spoken of the Queen's infirmity as we traveled and the fragile state of her body seemed to trouble her as the end of another pregnancy neared. One shoulder rounded forward, and her back flowed with the gentle curves of an ocean wave. Small and almost childlike with her thin frame, the Queen's face had attractive, delicate features and dark eyes that looked as sharp as blades. Fear clutched at my chest when she looked at me, for from this young woman I felt ruthless determination that would have done my own family proud.

"So this is the girl that your husband spoke of." She rose from her bed and swatted away the solicitous arms of her women. She came close to where I knelt and tilted my head back with a finger. "Such lovely hair," She mused, pulling one of my curls from beneath the hood. She questioned me about my relation to Louise and I maintained the story that we had devised, saying that I was a cousin of the Duchess of Ferrara. When the Queen heard of my time spent in the convent a small, satisfied smile touched her lips.

"A pious virgin no less. How delightful. Sing for me." She commanded.

For the next hour I sang to the Queen. I had no knowledge of popular songs. Instead I sang the prayers I had learned in the convent. The Pater Noster, Adoremus in Aeternum and the Salve Regina brought comfort as I sang their familiar words. For all that my vocation had been stolen my faith remained like a towering pine clinging to the side of a mountain.

Queen Claude inclined her head when my songs ended, and bid me rest for she had a singular honor in mind for the next day. "The English King is to dine with us, and I would have you sing for him. I will send a gown suitable for the occasion." Her smile suggested all the self satisfaction of a cat that had caught a particularly large mouse.

Louise began to curse under her breathe after we had left the Queen's presence. My command of her native tongue was not sufficient to understand all the words she hissed under her breath.

"Misérable, incapable et répugnant vieil imbecile!"

"Why would she have me there?" I asked, fear clogging my throat as I remembered King Henry's smile of the day before and my involuntary response to him. His face had haunted my restless sleep, reminding me of delights to be found in a man's strong arms.

Louise switched to Italian. "Whispers have reached her that the English king searches for a woman among our number who has captured his fancy. A beautiful woman with hair like honey." She reached up and twirled the same lock of hair around her finger.

"They can not know that it was I."

"Oh, I am sure they do not. Doubtless the feast will be heavily populated by women with light hair in the hope that she the king searches for is among them. And then, my sister, unless he finds another to share his bed, you will be served to the king much as a suckling pig is served at a feast, only the object in your mouth will not be an apple."

"Louise!" I protested. "I am promised to God!"

Louise shrugged. "This is the right of kings, dear sister, and neither you nor I have the power to stand against him. But you do not have the weapons necessary to escape the clutches of the English King with only your hymen as bounty."

"What weapons are those?"

"The ability to lie and deceive." She slipped her hand around my waist. "Shall I wear my red gown, sister, and attempt to seduce the king in your stead? After seeing him beside my king I confess that it would bring me some satisfaction to see if that remarkable hair festoons his entire body." Louise peeked at my face and began to laugh again as she discerned my fervent rejection of that offer.

I slept late into the morning and only rose when the servants of the Queen arrived to prepare me for the banquet. Her attendants worked their arts upon my body, bathing and anointing me with oil and fragrance, taming my curls until they fell artfully from beneath a hood and down the pale golden gown I wore. While they fussed a musician came and taught me what I was to sing that night, songs of love and passion that brought a flush to my face for I could not help but think of his strong, virile figure pursuing me much as the heroes in the ballads pursued their lovers.

My sister slipped a rope of pearls around my neck as a final adornment and pressed a kiss to my cheek. She could feel the rapid beat of my heart as we clung to one another.

"You are Borgia." She whispered. "Call to mind the memory of our father and be bold. Remember your mother Lucrezia and be brave." Only later did I realize the import of her words.

I arrived at the chateau before the other guests and the Queen had me concealed in a draped alcove. Hours passed in breathless anticipation as I waited. A change in the noise of the great hall signaled the moment the king arrived and I peeked from behind the curtain and found him in the crowd, surrounded by the glittering court.

It was not his rich clothing that set Henry Tudor apart from other men, for many of the nobles were dressed in robes of similar splendor. He loomed tall and handsome but there were many men similarly fair of face. Instead an indefinable aura of majesty cloaked him and drew everyone about him. Bright blue eyes searched through the crowd, and his smile flashed out often, white against skin kissed by the sun. His was a restless spirit, ever searching and vibrantly alive, brimming with ferocious intelligence. He was breathtaking to behold, like the kings of legend, as much apart from other men as a falcon among doves.

The feast seemed interminable, more spectacle than a meal. A wide variety of dishes had been prepared to display the culinary arts of France and pages passed before my hiding place carrying cygnets and venison, pheasants and bream in fantastical displays. Fruit and cream had been sculpted into ornate towers as delicate as falling snow.

"Your majesty." I finally heard the Queen say, "I hope that the entertainment this night will meet with your favor." And she signaled that I was to come forth.

The bright light of thousand candles dazzled my eyes as I walked forward to the low stool set close to the high table. I curtsied low, and waited for the king to speak.

"Rise." He said. Not by a twitch did the King betray his satisfaction in having found me, the elusive quarry and yet by some mysterious knowing I could sense his emotions. A small smile curved sculpted lips and his eyes no longer relentlessly searched through the crowd. They slid down my body with a velvet touch, lingering on the fullness of my bodice displayed so prominently in the golden gown.

I kept my eyes lowered as I sang for the king. As was no doubt usual at a feast few minded the music at first, preferring their private conversations, but as I continued the room became utterly still and I the focus of hundreds of eyes. My voice was longing made manifest and never, I think, had I sung more pleasingly.

When the song was over I would have made my escape but the king stopped me with a gesture.

"Another." The King commanded.

"Beg pardon, majesty, I know few ballads." I answered him.

The Queen smiled. "She is a sheltered virgin, Majesty, though well educated, and has spent many years in a convent. If you have need of an interpreter I shall see that she is placed at your disposal."

The king made a polite gesture and then rose from his throne-like chair. In the garden of embroidery that festooned his doublet the jeweled cross pinned to his chest shown like the fairest lily and its diamond center gleamed, catching the light of the candles as he stalked to where I sat and raised me to stand before him. The king was warm, not in the normal way that a healthy man is warm. More it was that he blazed with life, and his strong hand around mine felt as though torches had been lit in my skin. "For your song, beautiful one." He whispered so low no other could hear. He took the cross and pinned it to the low squared neckline of the golden gown. His fingers trembled as they made contact with my breast and my body sang in response.

"It is too great an honor, your Majesty." I tried to refuse and he brushed my words aside.

"Let us have dancing!" He partnered other women throughout the night, beautiful, cultured women who smelled of fine fragrance and caressed his ears with the sound of laughter and yet not for a moment did his regard leave me. He hunted me, watching without seeming to do so as I lost myself in the crowd of dancers. He partnered my sister, and I head him laugh with delight as they spoke. And then he stood before me, splendid, and held out his hand.

"Beg pardon, your majesty. I know no court dances."

The courtiers who followed the king began to titter behind their hands, and the king silenced them with a look

"Then we shall walk." He offered me his arm and, seeing that escape was impossible, I took it and allowed the king to lead me through the room.

"Do you have Latin?" He asked in a low tone.

"Ita vero." I answered, and he immediately switched to that language, which would grant us a measure of privacy from those less well educated.

"Why did you ride from me?"

"You hunted, Majesty, and I had no wish to be caught." The scent of him was intoxicating. Some nobles shunned bathing, preferring to disguise the scent of their bodies with fragrance. It was not so for the king. He smelled very masculine, leather and sweat and oil like cloves that must have been used to dress his short golden beard.

"And having learned who I am you are now content with my pursuit?" He murmured, eyes moving down me with barely concealed hunger tinted with derision, that I was a prize so easily won.

"On the contrary, I fly harder now then every before. Would my absence not cause my lady harm I would now be on the road away from this place."

He leaned down and touched my cheek with his finger. "And yet, this flush." It deepened when he drew his hand in a long, slow caress down my neck to feel the pulse. "My heart leapt like a hind when I saw you. I would see you again, away from here." His voice grew low and rough as he spoke, the voice of a man in the throes of a powerful desire and my body ached in response to his silken voice.

"I beg your leave to speak plainly, Majesty." He nodded. "I am virgin who would soon take her final vows and be wedded to Christ." He jerked back as though I had slapped him, and I continued. "Many women seek your favor. Choose one of them for your bed." I dropped into a deep curtsy and remained in that obedient posture until he moved on

The rest of the night passed with agonizing slowness, and the ghost of his hand drew a path down my neck with each breath, with each movement that revealed his strength and fluid grace. I could not help but watch him, a prisoner to the desires he had so easily kindled and for the first time in my life I wished to be other than what I was. Were I not a Borgia and he not a king we could have loved one another joyfully, freed from the restraints of a thousand conflicting desires.

Night scarcely had any hours left when the Queen made ready to retire, and in her soft voice she offered the king any boon within her power to grant for the honor of his company that night.

"I have been told that your king kissed each of the ladies of my court when he dined with my wife. I would claim the same prize." He bent low over Queen Claude and his kiss on her cheek brought roses and a smile of surpassing sweetness for few women were immune to his formidable charm. She left with her ladies, each of whom kissed the king lustily on the mouth. As he made his way around the room I could see noblewomen drawing their gowns down to display rounded breasts and cheeks being hastily pinched to bring more color to skin pale from the long night of dancing, hoping to capture his attention and share his bed. When he came to where I stood silence fell, for our earlier conversation had been noted. Louise kissed him with passionate abandon and a saucy wink that made him chuckle. When he turned to me his voice sounded lazy, at odds with the deep blue hunger of his eyes. "A kiss on the lips would sully one who is to be a bride of Christ." Time slowed, and many hours passed as he bent and pressed a chaste kiss to my flushed cheek, and there existed a lifetime where I could be stirred by the velvet of his mouth and the rich, spicy scent of his body. His arms tightened around me as we breathed in the same air and my tiny, involuntary gasp turned his eyes to the warm blue that dances in the heat of a fire.

As we walked to our pavilion my sister took my hand. "I fear the duration of your virgin state can be measured in hours, sister."

"He but kissed me on the cheek." I protested even as I shivered at the memory.

Louise snorted. "I have not seen a man look so aroused since my husband saw the fat new baker's girl. It made me wish that..." Louise's words broke off as a handsome man stopped before us and bowed low. His body was that of a warrior, strong and powerful, but his face was almost beautiful with dark hair that waved around his jaw and eyes of tawny velvet.

"Duchess." He murmured before he disappeared into the warren of tents. My sister watched him leave with an inscrutable expression.

"What splendid muscles that man has." I whispered in her ear, only to regret my teasing when I saw her sadness. "Who is he?"

"Philippe de Bourbon." She said. "An old friend."

"An old lover, I think."

Louise nodded. "To my great sorrow. Above all else it is foolishness to love one's lover. But then we Borgia never seem to love wisely."

The day had been filled with jousting and festivities that I could not avoid. At Claude's command I was displayed like a lamb brought to the market, finely gowned and sweet smelling, fit to tempt the heart of the king. Verily there was no need for those machinations our eyes relentlessly searched for one another in the throng and each time they met I experienced again that overwhelming flood of longing. The specter of the king followed me, taunting me with images of his face, dewed with sweat and laughing after he broke a lance and his small, secret smile when he saw that I had found him at last. The Queen of England I beheld for the first time. She had once been beautiful, for a shadow of it still clung to a face that now looked decades older than her husband. In her dark gown she appeared a crow among splendid peacocks and I felt a great rush of pity for her, the woman who had proved unable to provide her husband with that which he most desired. My sister whispered that Queen Katherine has birthed many sons, only to have them die in infancy and having reached the terminus of her child bearing years the only child to have lived was a girl. When her husband stripped to the waist to have his men wash him in full view of the crowd the Queen blushed with shock but I knew that he displayed himself for my benefit and I watched with scarlet cheeks and trembling hands.

He sent for me that night, as I had known he would. Liveried pages came to my sister's pavilion with the invitation and escorted me to palace, where I gained entrance through a private passage that avoided the great hall where hundreds of courtiers gathered. The light of dozens of candles could not pay sufficient homage to the beauty of the king's quarters within the palace of illusion. The walls were of cloth of gold that breathed in the night air, and great expanses of glass overhead showed the twinkling of stars that studded the night with diamonds more precious than any jewel. White floors were covered with silken rugs in tones of red and gold and the carved bed appeared enormous, draped with costly linen. The room smelled of incense and the spicy clove scent of the man that waited, dressed in black velvet ornamented with silver.

Henry slumped in a chair, sipping from goblet of wine. Candlelight had robbed his disordered hair of its reddish tint and his doublet and shirt were unlaced. Where it gapped at his throat I could see hair dusting the musculature of his chest. The heavy chain of kingship across his chest and a massive ring were the only marks of his office.

He did not smile when I made my obeisance to him, only asked that I sit in the other chair and offered me wine.

"I find myself possessed of a strange humor this night. Do you know why that is?

"No, Majesty."

He sat in the other chair and resumed his negligent posture. "I did as you suggested. I took a girl to my bed. Young, beautiful, and so grateful that she wept with joy. No doubt she is praying even now for a child."

I made no reply to this and he continued, his voice growing angry. "I found myself so bored that I could scarcely spend. Are you an enchantress that has bewitched me, that I should see your face even whilst inside another?"

"No, Majesty."

His eyes bore into me, seeking some explanation for the extraordinary feelings that we aroused in one another.

"Tell me what you want to share my bed. Ask and it can be yours."

"I ask for nothing but your good opinion of me."

Henry snorted. "Everyone wants something." He said. "The crown is like a fat sow where everyone seeks a teat. Do you wish me to grant you a title, or promise to find you a husband when we part?

"No, Majesty."

"Why not?" He demanded, and a volcanic, dangerous temper stirred beneath the surface of his mind. Rumors had swirled throughout the assemblage that he had loudly quarreled with his wife, whose devotion to Christ had kept her from many of the celebrations. Undoubtedly the sight of the pregnant Queen Claude, who had already birthed two fine sons, added to the discord.

"All of these things I could provide for myself, had I that desire, Majesty." I slid to my knees before him, a supplicant. "I am the product of a family whose crimes were legion and I have dedicated my life to their redemption through service to Christ. I lacked only days before my final vows were to be taken when the lusts of a powerful man drove me from my vocation. You are a better man then he, my lord." He made to speak but I hurried on, words tumbling from my lips. "You are just, and called a great king. I beg you, leave me to God.

"Has not your queen ordered you into my bed?" My words had soothed his ego, replacing his anger with the weariness of a man who was never desired for his own sake, whose company was never sought for other then what could be gained.

"She has, majesty." Queen Claude had spoken to me, offering great reward if I pleased the King and persuaded him to join with her husband against the Holy Roman Emperor and implying the opposite should I fail. "But I would not deceive you. Were I to lay with you it would be in spite of your crown, not because of it. My body desires you, majesty, as you can doubtless tell, but my will is a match for your own and I would keep to my chosen path."

"What would you have me do, then, Little Nun?" He seemed amused by my continued refusal of that which so many sought. "If I dismiss you now you shall suffer for it."

"Send me from you with exclamations of disgust, Majesty. Say that my person suffers from some dreadful malady or that my bed skills were insufficient to keep your interest for longer than a single night."

The king's lips twitched. Wine had turned his eyes a soft shade of blue, lit with humor. "It must be after some hours have passed. I would not have it be bandied about that I am a hasty lover. Tell me your story, Little Nun. If it pleases me I will let you return to your tent untouched."

"And if it does not please your highness?" I asked.

The king smiled, and his eyes caressed my face and body. "Then I shall find another way to spend the twilight hours."

Voices screamed in my mind to lie to him, the king who desired me, and yet I could not. I wanted him to see me, to know the truth of who I was. The story burned in my mind and to tell the whole of it was to open my chest like the immaculate heart of Christ for him to see.

My mothers whispered softly into my ear as I spoke, telling me the words that would best speak of longing and forbidden desire. I wove their story like a tapestry wherein the velvet darkness of Cesare and Lucrezia Borgia became entwined with the flaming red of Micheletto de Corella and the shining steel of Elizabetta, coming together to form the pattern of my life. To speak of them was to have my family around me once more. The king hung on my words as though a young boy entranced by the voice of a minstrel, laughing with delight.

"A Borgia, by the living God." He shook his head. "The Duchess of Valentinois, your sister. She knows all of this?"

I remembered her words from yesterday. "In its entirety, Majesty."

He had lately heard of the death of Cardinal d' Este and questioned me about it, for in an effort to save my mother from harm I had barely spoken of my attack and rescue from the convent. "How where you able to resist the Cardinal if you are, as you claim, yet a virgin?"

I took a sip of wine and smiled at him over the rim. "I cut his rod off."

The king laughed, waiting, I think, for me to reveal that I had done no such thing. When I did not he turned pale and did not speak again as I related that sordid affair.

I pulled the gown from my shoulders and showed him a thin line of a scar. "Here where the iron branded me. Here .." And I pulled the billowing sleeves back and pressed his hand against the rough skin of my wrist where ropes had buried themselves as I struggled. "Here where they bound me so I could be abused by the guards. I paid for my arrogance but less, I think, then he."

"I am sorry for all that you have suffered." He said, and his voice had lost its mocking edge. He drew my gown back over my shoulder gently, covering the marks of my degradation. "Would you have the men that violated you punished?"

"They were punished, my lord."

"Verily there is nothing that I can give you, Lucia Borgia." He took my hand and pressed a kiss to my fingers. "And you will not share my bed?"

"The wiser course would be for us to part as friends, my lord. A child born of your august lineage and my own would seem destined to bring about the apocalypse." I teased him, grateful that he had not pressed me further for even to mine own ears the denials were not as loud as before.

Had I not been watching his face so closely I might have missed his swiftly concealed look of unbearable longing. "A son born of our lines would indeed be a marvelous creature. My father admired both his Holiness and Duke Valentino greatly. Had Cesare Borgia succeeded in his ambitions perhaps you would have been offered to me as a bride and our children could have ruled Christendom."

"Perhaps."

Around us the assembled court was beginning to stir as dawn approached. We had spent the night in conversation and rather than assuage my peculiar fascination with him the time had drawn us closer together. I wished nothing so much as to stay next to him, to spend the day alone as we had spent the night alone, and I could see in his face the same desire.

"Go, Lucia." He said, and drew my cloak over my shoulders as though to hide the marks of passion. "The night has passed and the wine might soon make me forget my promise to leave you untouched."

"He is clever than I thought." Louise muttered as I spoke to her the events of that night. We whispered to one another, trying to avoid the hawkish eyes of Louis de La Tremouille, who doubtless informed the Queen of my night spent with Henry.

"He is a righteous man." I protested. "He did not force me to share his bed."

"By the holy right breast where our Lord suckled, Lucia, the thing to fear is not that he will bed you! In the end one rod is much the same as the next. The thing to be feared is that you will love him."

The king sent for me again that night and I walked to his chambers the subject of a thousand inquisitive stares. The field had buzzed with rumors of the king's new lover. I minded none of it, lost in my eagerness to see him once more. Our pattern of the previous night repeated and we spent long hours in conversation that he seemed to relish as much as I. Tourneys and banquets and even the betrothal of his daughter to the dauphin seemed only dreams compared to the reality of nights spent next to him, baring our souls in a manner more intimate than the touch of hands on skin. Although he continued to offer me great wealth to share his bed it had become more of a jest and my continued refusal only caused him to smile.

"I was to enter the church, Lucia. My brother Arthur should have been king." When I professed myself ignorant of his brother he told me of becoming king and taking his brother's wife for his own. His face grew so troubled as he spoke that I took his hand in mine. "He would have been a far better king than I. Sometimes I fear that there is another soul living inside me, full of wrath and dark desires, unfit to rule." He smiled down at me. "You are a gentle balm on my spirit, Lucia. The dark can not thrive in the presence of so much light."

As the days progressed with each night was spent together he confided in me still further of things that kept locked deep inside his troubled soul. No material things did I crave from him, only his voice and innermost heart and these he shared in abundance.

"My wife." He mused. "Do you know that when I first saw her, the princess sent to be my brother Arthur's wife, I could imagine no woman more beautiful. Even you pale before the loveliness of that memory." The king's eyes were haunted. "I know not what transpired between her and my brother but she claimed to never have bedded him. I have lain with virgins, Lucia. There is blood and pain. With her there was neither, although when I claimed her she cried out as though pierced with a red hot poker." He was silent, and I thought perhaps he had fallen into sleep until he continued in a voice so low I had to strain to hear the words. "We tell ourselves lies, and we believe them for anything else will destroy us. I tell myself that I obeyed my father's will, and married her and yet each time I take Katherine to bed I commit incest in my heart. God punishes me for that sin by taking my sons so there will be no one to carry on my line." I rested my head on his knee and he pulled the hood from my hair and combed his fingers through it until sleep claimed his tortured mind. I watched him for a long time, trying to impress on my memory the way he looked then; sad and yet beautiful as the fire caught the gold lights in his hair. My sister's greatest fear had been realized. Love was not the calamitous emotions of that first meeting, or even the desire that turned my knees to water. Love stole upon me watching him sleep, seeing the lines of fatigue around his eyes, and learning that the king snored.

That night, long after I had returned to my bed, guards came and with no word of explanation or even time to garb myself I was returned to the king's tent.

His gentlemen of the bedchamber must have undressed the king and put him into the carved bed that dominated the room. Clad only in a shirt, he strode about the gently stirring sides of the pavilion as though on a battlefield, the remnants of a defeat scattered about him. He caught me to him in an embrace that crushed the breath from my body.

"I could not find you." He said, and his eyes still shown with the light of his dreams. "Though I searched every tent I could not find you. You left me and my heart became cold and barren and I a pitiful creature."

I tried to soothe him. "Majesty, it was but a dream. I am here."

"But you will not stay for there is nothing that you desire from me."

"Only yourself."

"Then here with you I am no longer a king. I am Henry. Say it." He shook my shoulders roughly.

"Henri."

He kissed me, and I was lost.

He would have let me go after only a kiss, but I had made my choice. I loved him because he had shown me his secret heart, scarred and torn, as conflicted by his very nature as I. My family had given me the precious gift of determining my own destiny and not until that moment did I understand that by locking myself away from life I had given into the basest form of cowardice. They would never have wished me to live only for their redemption. This was the last lesson that they had sought to teach me, that I was free to live and be loved and their approval felt like a holy benediction.

Henry had been with legions of women, and no doubt developed skills that could bring any woman to ecstasy. None of these he showed with me. He pressed me down on the silken rug and we tore the clothing from one another's bodies. He loved as though long without a woman, rough and greedy and pained by the beauty of our bodies twining together, lit by the embers of a glowing fire. I cried when he spilled my virgin blood. Not because of the pain, I cried at the utter perfection of the moment, and finding in him the man that could be my match.

"You look less pleased than I expected." I murmured hours later from my resting place near his heart.

He rolled until I lay trapped beneath him. Having finally breeched my body he seemed unwilling to leave it and we lay melded together, one body and one beating heart. "For all that I have taken you I feel myself to be the one ensnared, Lucia, light of my life."

Sister Maria Lucia reached up and brushed the tears away from Marietta's eyes. The elderly nun's eyes were clear, for her grief seemed too great to be expressed.

"You truly loved him."

"I did." Sister Lucia said. "I pray hourly for his soul, for I fear that by ending our love I stole the light from him. The cruel man who killed two wives and severed himself from the church is not the one who loved me in a golden tent. That tyrant came later, birthed, I think in part, by my cruel abandonment of him. Dry your eyes sister, else I shall cry as well, and I will tell you how I broke the king's great heart.


	10. Chapter 10

"I will tell you how I broke the king's great heart."

"Henri." I whispered, trapped beneath him in cocoon of silken linen and strong, firm muscle. "Henri, you must let go."

The king murmured incohertently and tightened his arms around me. Dawn was beginning to break through the camp and the first streaks of weak light shown through the colored glass window above the bed. Within his room the air still smelt of night, perfumed with incense and the aroma of our bodies, bitter and heady as wine against my tongue. With a sleepy smile felt against my neck he pressed inside of me.

"Henri!" I squeaked. "Your gentlemen wait outside!"

He moved again, gently testing the strength of my resistance and found none. He raised himself, stiff armed, and grinned, face full of mischief. Red hair stood on end, wildly disordered, and rose gold dusted his body, the gilding on a statue, marching down over muscles honed by constant exertion. Broad shouldered and narrow waisted with powerful thighs, he appeared more glorious to me than God, and my heart worshipped him. How different the lover in my bed was from the man that reigned as king! Demanding and arrogant as a monarch, he was the most unselfish of lovers, giving of himself unstintingly until I found bliss and then delaying his passion still further until I became as much a slave to his desires as he was to mine.

"Then you must be silent." He teased and he settled back against me with the contented noise of a man that had found his hearth after a long time away.

When he finally let me go the day had begun around us and the noises of the gentlemen outside the door were disgruntled. We had been lovers for a week, and each day he made me stay later and later with him, sleeping in his arms until I would steal away back to the pavilion under the cover of early morning. The Borgia sensuality which was my birthright had come into full flower and found in Henry its perfect match.

He sprang from the bed. "Cover yourself. I would not have the men see that which is mine alone."

The king was in a playful mood and he laughed and jested with his gentleman of the privy chamber as they went about the preparations for a meeting with King Francis.

"A fine day, Majesty." The man who spoke loomed tall and even more handsome than the king. "You appear to be in good humor."

"Indeed, Suffolk. The sun has never shone so brightly."

"Was your night restful, Majesty?"

"No." He said and then chuckled ruefully. "I shall be forced to sleep through the night soon else I shall waste away like a bull with too great a herd." The men laughed appreciatively and cast looks to the bed where only my blushing face was visible.

A metal tub for the king's bath was prepared and servants entered, filling it with buckets of steaming water. Order was restored to the room by their hands, and the king's men laid out his garments for the festivities and retrieved the jewels scattered about the floor, remnants of the king's whimsical lovemaking of the night before. Henry's eyes never strayed from mine as he waited, gloriously, unconcernedly nude and becoming aroused once more as our eyes clashed and danced over the well used form of the other. Several long scratches blazed crimson on his chest, fitting retribution for the love bites that discolored my neck. He lowered himself into the tub and submerged completely, then slicked back wet hair, the movement sculpting the lines of his chest and arms into glorious perfection. Droplets of water clung to his eyelashes and beard, kindling again the desire that he had so recently assuaged. Henry watched me with a smile and raised eyebrow, reading the prurient directions of my thoughts, and dismissed the servants with an impatient hand.

"My liege, the tourney shall begin soon." One man protested.

"Out." He ordered, and when the men had left I slipped naked from the bed.

"My apologies, Majesty." I said, coming to stand behind him and smoothing my hands over his shoulders. I bent low and whispered in his ear. "I merely wished to tend to your washing as the men would have done."

"Henry. I am Henry to you." He said roughly, twisting and lifting me into the tub astride his hips as though I weighed no more than a child. He found his place inside of me with a groan wrenched from the center of his being. "By Christ woman, I shall draw blood again if I do not tire soon of your charms."

I twined my arms around his neck and moved in the slow rhythm that he had taught me, a dance of straining limbs and endless heat. "I am Borgia, Henri. Perhaps it is I that shall bloody you."

Much later the king's men returned and robed him in accustomed splendor, red velvet doublet slashed to reveal cloth of gold edged with pearls. Undoubtedly the scandal of our intemperate passion would travel through the king's court, many of whom had been kept waiting while he spilled water upon the floor and made me cry out in delight. I dozed in bed, content until I could retrieve my gown without the intrusion of a dozen eyes.

"Lucia." He had come on silent feet to stand beside me.

"Majesty." I whispered. He took my hand and raised me upright. I pressed the linen against my chest, trying to preserve some semblance of modesty.

Henry gestured to a tall man. "This is Suffolk. He will see to having your things brought from your sister's pavilion. You must make ready for we leave in three days time."

I made no reply. His insistence that I accompany him to England had been our only source of discord during the last heady days. The position of his official lover I refused with as much vehemence as I had earlier refused to share his bed and Henry had ignored my objections with royal indifference.

"Stay here, Lucia." He commanded, including the Duke in his look, ensuring that I would not be allowed to flee. "I will return at midday."

Gorgeously robed noblemen followed the king, leaving me with the Duke who, for all that he possessed the heady beauty of a Greek god, stirred me not at all. The Duke of Suffolk was so great a person in my lover's kingdom that Louise had deemed it necessary to warn me of him during our whispered morning conversations The kings most trusted confident, Suffolk had married Henry's sister, the Dowager Queen of France, without permission and escaped with little punishment for such was the great love Henry bore him. A man to be feared, my sister said, and respected.

"You have made my king very happy."

I said nothing, only returned his look.

"He has spoken of you to me, and his plans for the future. He will build you fine homes close to each of his palaces. A title is to be yours, and jewels and gowns fit for a queen. Anything you desire shall be provided. He schemes and plots like an Italian Pope already to find a way that your sons will inherit his throne."

"I have asked for nothing save his love." I told the Duke, angry that I should be thought so mercenary.

"Which has made you all the more desirable in his eyes." He studied me in silence, taking in the measure of my character with eyes that appeared too jaded for his handsome face. "You seem to be a righteous woman, Lucia de Corella, for all that you have taken him to your bed. Do not come to England. He desires you now, but there have been other loves, other bastard children. In time they have all faded from his mind and you shall as well."

His words stung, for they were a reflection of my own fears. "Would your king approve, that you have spoken in this way to me?"

Suffolk laughed. "He would probably chop off my head for he is infatuated with you such as I have never seen. But he is my king, and my dearest friend, and I would not have him suffer for your sake. And it will end that way. If you come to England blood will be shed. Think on it." He turned for the door and called for servants to attend me.

The Duke's words resonated, though I knew he spoke more to protect his own interests than from any noble intent. With the assistance of a sour faced maid I clothed myself in the crumpled gown of yesterday and walked through the deserted palace rooms. The canvas walls breathed gently in air swept that swept in from the sea, redolent of salt and fish and the increasingly rancid odor of the field. I found a window that showed the festivities outside, the jousts and wrestling, the actors and acrobats who preformed for the enjoyment of the nobles who were becoming restless after two weeks of endless entertainment.

What held my attention was not the festivities but the desolation of the land surrounding the encampment, the deep trenches in the mud from the passage of wagons and the absence of birds or wild animals. Spectacle and show had destroyed the once pristine field, stripping it down to bare earth and the ruins of its beauty were only disguised by the golden pavilions, fantastical banners and glittering gowns of the revelers. When the courts departed it would take years to repair, decades before deer would brave the quiet of a sunset without fear of the hunter's horn. The memory of the untouched landscape from the first day filled my eyes with tears, for I recognized in myself a similar fate.

I searched through the palace until I found the king's private chapel, complete with a separate alter where he took communion each morning. Here the colors of the hangings were more subdued, with tapestries depicting the life and sacred passion of our Lord. The stillness of heart needed for prayer eluded me though I assumed a supplicants posture upon the kneeler. The sanctified air of the chapel cleared my thoughts, allowing me to escape the sensual trap of Henry Tudor's embrace.

I breathed in the familiar scents of beeswax candles and the heady, cloying incense, letting them remind me of the life I had left behind, the life that God had chosen for me.

A shaft of weak sunlight broke through the clouds and shone through the single window behind the alter, illuminating dust motes that hung in the air and catching the errant sparkle of a tiny jewel trapped in the thicket of my curls, blue as the king's bright eyes. Henry had decked me in the splendor of his regalia the previous night; diamonds the size of pebbles, blood red rubies and the chain of office clasped around my neck were his promise to me. If I journeyed to England I would be cherished, loved, and provided for as long as the king's favor lasted. And yet however much honor he heaped upon me, whatever titles his grace saw fit to grant, I would be a whore. For one promised to God, accustomed to the veneration due a virgin, that fate was unendurable. Already sneers and disapproval dug into my skin with a thousand shallow cuts, wounds of a careless thought and a maid's disapproval. Where I to become his acknowledged mistress for longer than this short season out of time it would destroy me, stripping away the light he claimed to cherish until I became only another Borgia lost to excess and the lure of power.

An errant wind buffeted the canvas walls of the palace and the candles guttered in their golden stands. I had dreamed of winds the previous night and woken with a shiver when I heard them begin to call my name. I did not have to search through my memory for long to understand the meaning of the dream for the story of Francesca and Paulo had been in my thoughts often since I had succumbed to love. A copy of Dante's poem had been a shared treasure among the girls at the convent, carefully guarded from watchful eyes and all had sighed over the fate of the infamous lovers, eternally buffeted by lust in the inferno. Only now did I understand the lure of the passion that had so utterly consumed them.

Gradually the fog of thought lifted and I realized that another had come to seek the comfort of Christ's embrace. Through the gauzy curtain I could hear her approach the alter and lift her voice in prayer, the words accented with the tones of Castile. A spreading darkness on the floor showed where the shadow Queen knelt with her ladies.

Katherine the Queen and Lucia the bastard. How like we were, I mused, watching her. Both light of hair, born of the hot southern sun, and devout. I saw Katherine, and in her broken image what I would become in twenty years of loving the king, only she had the protection of his name and a crown. None of these I possessed, and my life would be utterly consumed by his fire. For that was his nature. The great vigor of the king was fed by love of his country and his people and, ultimately, the love of the women drawn helplessly to his side.

Some noise must have alerted her to my presence for she started from her kneeling position and faced me across the partition, an older woman with lines of care creasing her once beautiful face. The Queen recognized me and stiffened with anger. She dismissed her women. After their departure she cast me a look leaden with disdain. "You pollute the king my husband's chapel with your presence." Her voice sounded harsh and resentful, not the carefully modulated tones she used in her court dealings.

"We are all welcome before God, your Majesty." I had no quarrel with her and spoke respectfully, as was her due.

"You would quote the words of God to me? As though you were fit to even speak in my presence?" She drew herself up and in her stocky, upright figure the blood of a hundred kings and queens shone. "So many of you have passed through his life. Whores where he finds a moments pleasure and still he returns to me, for we are bound by holy bonds that nothing can sever."

A shard of ice lodged in my heart at her words and I lashed out in pain. "Who are you to lecture me on holiness, good Queen Katherine, the lover of two brothers? Is your own soul so free of taint?" The Queen gasped in shock as though I had struck at her heart, and I fled from the chapel rather than injure her further with my cruelty.

When the king returned at midday tears had left wet tracks on my face that I could not conceal. He knelt on the floor and embraced me tenderly. In his strong arms I found the peace and joy which had once been mine only in prayer.

"My light, what has caused your tears?"

"Henri, I can not come to England." Hours of prayer to a Saint Lucia, my patron, had shown clearly the path that would lead me back to God.

"No." He said firmly. He tilted my chin back and stared into my eyes. In his I could see a determination bordering on madness. "No, you will not leave me. You will live beside me and be my love. When you become pregnant we shall pass it off as Katherine's and our son will rule."

"And if she does not agree to this?"

"I am the king and it is my will."

"And a will such as hers is not so easily bent. And when the first flush of this passion fades.."

"It shall not." He gathered me into his arms and we sat in the pool of warm colored light that the sun shining through the glass had painted on the floor. "Can you not feel it, Lucia, when we are together like this? That in all the world no one could love you half so well?"

"You have loved others." I accused, infuriated by the calm certainty he could shape the world to suit his desires. "There have been others who have shared your bed and born your children! Should I bear only daughters will they be called Fitzroy as well?" I spat. Whispers like venomous serpents sounded in my head, tales of his many lovers and the children born with his unmistakable Tudor face.

Henry disregarded my words and clasped my head in his hands, bringing his forehead to rest against mine. Thumbs rough as stone pressed against my temples, where blood rushed with the sound of armies on the march, a furious tempo echoed by our breathing.

"Bear me a dozen daughters." He said, voice low and fierce, blue eyes bearing into mine as though to steal my thoughts and govern my actions. "Spurn the wealth which is all that I can offer you. Sink your sharp claws into me and draw blood with your words. Hate me. Do anything you would except leave me." He shook me, bruising my skin, and then pressed his lips against mine in a fierce kiss. "I would sooner lock you in a tower than have you parted from my side for a moment. I love you. I will do anything to keep you by my side."

Henry's love burned like fire, a towering inferno of need and possessiveness that I recognized for they were my own tempestuous emotions. Creatures such as we were could never love gently or kindly, for such softness was foreign to our nature. Truly in all the world there was no other whom I could love half so well, for he was my twin soul, the only man ever to see the truth of who I was and love me for it. Our love was madness and yet I reveled in it, abandoning myself to the whirlwind like Francesca and Paulo and found myself utterly consumed.

There are many memories that I keep close to my heart of Henry Tudor. They hang like jewels in my mind, more precious than any gift he gave to me save one. That first meeting, when he defeated me with a single glance. When he showed me his broken, tormented heart. The kiss upon my cheek. They pale before the glory of that memory, when he loved me beneath the glass window that painted our bodies with the colors of the Tudor rose shown therein, green and gold and vivid crimson. It was the truest joining I have ever known, tragic and wild and full of beauty, like a summer sunrise before a deadly storm.

He sat erect on the floor in the puddle of light and eased me down until I clasped him a velvet embrace. My breasts pressed against his chest and his hands on my hips moved me slowly, savoring our joining. He moved and drank the gasp like honey from my lips. I sought his breath with my mouth, the feather of distance separating our...

"My apologies, Marietta. I have allowed the delights of those memories to run away with my tongue. I did not wish to assault the purity of your ears."

"Please, do not cease on my account." Marietta squeaked and fanned her scarlet cheeks.

Sister Maria Lucia chuckled. "Let it be enough to say that say that Henry loved me long that day and when we two parted the warmth of the sun no longer painted our bodies or even the sky, for night had fallen. He left to attend to duty and I returned to my sister's pavilion."

"You know that you must leave him, sister." Louise and I sat on her bed, where rumpled linens and a faint odor spoke of a lover entertained in the night.

"How can I?" My eyes were still dazzled by the image of him decked in the colors of the rainbow. "I love him."

Louise bit her lip and looked on the verge of tears. "That is why you must leave him. Lucia..." She urged, clasping my hands in both of hers. "Were you other then what you are I would wish you joy of it and him! Truly to be the beloved of a king is not so great a sacrifice. But you are too good for the cruel world of the court. It will destroy you to be known as his whore, to have your children taken from you. And the Queen, for all that she is a dry husk, is a good and holy woman. Would you be the cause of her disgrace?"

"All of this would I bear for his sake." I could see the torrent of words which would soon emerge from her lips and sought to forestall them. "You counsel me to leave him and yet I have seen how you well you govern your own heart. This bed smells of love but not, I think, of your husband."

Louise shrugged. "Yes, and I love as hopelessly as you. Philippe and I.. " She exhaled a huge breath and fell back against the coverlet. She plucked a loose thread from the tiny blue flowers embroidered on her gown. "We journeyed to court on the same road the year after I was married. Spring rains made the way impassable and our parties took shelter in a chateau abandoned during the great dying. We were lovers before the end of that first night. He made love to me in towers crumbling to dust with stones pressed against my back and in courtyards where mist clung to my gown. A hundred times he loved me during those days and the memory of it still warms me. Perhaps one day, if my husband dies before I am a crone... But it is no matter. I console myself with a dream. But for you even that dream is beyond imagining. If Katherine dies, he could never crown you as his Queen. You are a bastard."

Had Louise spoken with anything other than perfect love and sadness her frank words would have torn the fragile fabric of our relationship.

"And what of our family?" She continued. "The secret of your birth is not so well hid that others can not discover the truth of it as I have done. Would you disgrace our Father and Lucrezia's memory, revealing their secret to all and placing the woman who raised you in grave danger? Already the agents of two courts search for details of your life and I have been hard pressed to refuse them."

"How was it you learned the truth of them?" I asked, seeking temporary refuge from words that I could not counter.

Louise laughed. "Our father was not as clever as he thought. On their wedding night Cesare Borgia admitted to loving another, and it took only the rumors of their tender devotion to convince my mother that he spoke of his sister. And still she loved him, and sought Lucrezia's aid to free him from prison for in all the world she knew no one else could love him as they did. When his sword was brought to the Duchess after his death it only affirmed that which she already knew."

"Charlotte de Albret must have been a woman of unparalleled strength and beauty, as you are. I wish I could have known her."

Louise clasped my hand. "She would have loved you as I do. The world would have trembled in fear had we her wisdom to guide us."

We embraced and the tears on our cheeks mingled

"Love him, sister. But I have made plans that will allow you to escape if there is a need."

A noise outside the king's door pulled me from slumber. Henry lay sprawled face down in the bed, deeply in the arms of Morpheus. He had fallen asleep before I came from Louise's pavilion and rather than wake him I had slipped next to him, where sleep soon found me as well.

It sounded again, and a hastily muffled word of protest. Footsteps approached the door. The king's gentlemen would never disturb him in this manner and icy fingers of fear crawled up my back at the knowledge of danger. Naked, I slipped from the bed and found my knives. I waiting in the deepest shadows, the training of Micheletto sounding like a prayer in my ears.

The door opened, and in the dim light a large man walking quietly toward the bed. I emerged from the darkness and shadowed his movements. When he drew close to where Henry lay I pushed him off balance. He crashed to the floor and I straddled him and pressed my knife to the place on his throat where a jeweled collar met a dark beard.

"Majesty." I called, and then called again. With a muffled oath Henry sat up, blinking. His eyes found where I had trapped the man on the ground. From the open door light spilled into the room and a dozen French and English watched with horrified faces.

"My dear." Henry said gently. "Why do you sit upon my brother the king of France.?"

With a gasp I threw myself back even as the prone king began to laugh.

"Henri, do not rebuke her. I was quite enjoying myself. I come to visit you this morning and instead of my brother Henri I am beset by an Amazon." The king laughed. His words showed good humor but his eyes sparkled with desire when he looked at me. "How very astute you are, brother. In this one you have both a lover and a defender." He held his hand out and, thus forced, I rose naked from the floor to stand before him. "What a beautiful little devil you are," he said, admiring my form with a practiced eye. "The cousin of my darling Louise, I think. Will you next travel to my court?"

Henry rose from the bed and walked soft footed, to stand behind me, his naked thighs brushing the roundness of my hips. "She will travel with me to England, brother. I have not tired of her charms." His hand curled about my waist possessively. Rage stiffened my spine at the knowledge that in this moment I was no more than a prize that Henry had won.

The king's lip protruded in an unmistakable pout. "I am loathe to let you leave with such a jewel. I must rebuke my friend Louis. He did not tell me the songbird has such splendid feathers and sharp claws." Francis's eyes continued to caress my body, displayed like a prize under Henry's hands. His dark eyes suddenly flashed with wicked humor. "Let us wrestle for her. If I win she shall come to my court."

Henry laughed, the booming, good natured laugh of the king. "You bargain too meanly, bother. Let me send this girl away and we can discuss the nature of the wager." He turned his back on my horrified eyes and ignored my silent plea. "Suffolk!" He bellowed. When the Duke arrived I was shoved to his arms as though I were chattel, a harlot where the king had found his ease for a single night. The Duke spread his cloak over my shoulders and led me from the room where I was assaulted by the laughing, sneering faces of French and English noblemen.

Suffolk helped me to gown myself in a small chamber and said nothing about my furious, humiliated tears. I was still weeping when soldiers returned me to my sister's pavilion.

Louise sent everyone away and with a glance she divined my thoughts. I would leave, that very moment had I been able for I had been humiliated beyond endurance by the man who claimed to love me.

"You are certain?" She asked. "You would never be able to see him again."

I am not a whore, my pride screamed, remembering the laughing faces of the court and the king's indifference. I am the daughter of Cesare and Lucrezia Borgia. I am the granddaughter of Alexander Sextus. "Yes."

I spent that day and night in the pavilion of Philippe de Bourbon, where the servants of the king could not find me, though I watched as men in green and white livery scoured the entire field.

"You must be seen." Louise said, and she touched fragrance to the hollow of my neck and brushed paint on my pale cheeks. The last tourney was soon to occur and she had come to Philippe's tent to prepare me. The black gown she brought emphasized the pallor of my skin and the deep hollows under my eyes, the remnant of a sleepless night. Her arm around my waist lent me strength, and together we walked to where the last day of jousting would soon begin. Thunder rumbled and the gray skies matched my desolate mood. A storm would soon break across the field, and the air felt heavy with impending rain.

My eyes flew straight to Henry and I drank the sight of him in, knowing it would be my last. He stood under a cloth of gold tent as his men finished fastening the armor around his chest. His face was as pale as mine despite the heat of the day, and his eyes searched relentlessly up and down the field as the men readied him.

For all my anger I could not stop the softness that flowed through me at his obvious misery, the grief and regret stamped so plainly upon his face. A night of thought had clarified my mind and allowed me to understand why Henry had acted as he had. A king's mistress could be exploited and bribed, threatened or cajoled. A king's beloved was a fatal weakness, a loosed arrow that could pierce his heart. Knowing this I forgave Henry but I was Borgia, and would not allow myself to be debased again.

The unremitting darkness of the gown caught the kings eye and I felt the moment that he found me, pale cheeked and drab among the cheering crowd . He started toward where I stood but the Duke caught his arm, gesturing toward the other side of the field where an opponent already waited upon a prancing horse. The king swore, uncaring of the watching cardinals, and mounted his horse.

"Have you ever seen a joust, Marietta?"

The question jarred Marietta from the waking dream of a shouting crowd and a handsome, red headed king whose heart bled upon the field. "No." She answered.

"They have fallen out of favor. And, verily, they were ridiculous things, so much danger and gold expended on something that took only a moment. Years later Henri injured his leg during a joust and it troubled him ever after. That is why he grew so fat."

Marietta had learned much of the elderly nun's mind over the past hours and did not protest against the interruption in the narrative though she very much wished to. At the end of a long life, when she faced the unending darkness of the grave, only happy memories were to be savored.

"For that day though, all fell before the power of his lance and he blazed with the glory of the sun."

He unhorsed his competitor and acknowledged the roar of the crowd with an indifferent wave, for he had found me again. He pulled off his created helmet. Sweat had matted his hair and brought a hectic flush to his cheeks.

Forgive me. His eyes begged. Forgive me, I love you.

Words had never needed a voice to be spoken between us and I made no attempt to conceal my anger and hurt. To be disregarded like a slipper, wagered about as though a whore cut so deeply that the wound still bleed. I allowed my anger to lash against him, white hot as lightening and Henry flinched back from it. He dismounted and walked to the pavilion. He spoke to the hovering Duke of Suffolk as the gilded armor was removed and pressed something into his hand. The Duke made his way to where I stood, and the crowds parted in front of him like the armies of Pharaoh before the fiery pillar.

"My king sends you greetings, lady, and hopes that you will join him in his quarters soon."

"What, and miss the rest of the jousting?" I said, unable to summon a drop of enthusiasm for the sport.

Suffolk chuckled. "You truly are in a temper, as my king said. He bid me give you this, a symbol of his deepest apologies." The ring in the Duke's hand was simple, a small red stone encircled by a golden band. "It once graced the hand of Margaret Beaufort, his grandmother, and it is among his most precious possessions. For him to gift it to you is no small matter."

The king's eyes burned across the field so I made a show of curling the dukes fingers around the ring.

"Pray tell your king that I am not to be bought."

Another rumble of laughter started deep in the duke's chest. "I feel as though I stand between the fire of two cannon." He said ruefully. "His majesty said you would refuse but I was to tell you that had he wished to regain your favor with jewels he would have sent something worth tenfold of this ring. Instead he sent a memento he cherished of a good and holy woman who loved him before he was a king, knowing that you would do the same." I would have refused again but the Duke lowered his voice and spoke urgently. "Take it else the king will come himself and place it upon your hand. He is half out of his wits with grief already."

The Duke slid the ring upon my finger where it lay like a drop of blood against my knuckle.

"For all his fine words has his majesty forgotten that I am now pledged to journey to the French kings court?" The scandal of the wager had traveled widely. King Francis and Henry had wrestled and my lover, perhaps distracted by my absence, had been felled by a cunning move.

"They did not wager about you, girl. My king lost a diamond bracelet, nothing more." The Duke hesitated and then spoke again. "It was an error when I counseled you to leave."

"No, sir, you spoke rightly.

"Lucia.." His voice faltered when he felt the point of the knife I had pressed against his side.

"Loose your hand, sir, else you shall not live out the hour. Tell your king that I mean to return to God and my vocation." Across the crowd I found Henry's eyes for the last time.

I love you. Goodbye.

Without waiting to hear the Duke's next words I sheathed my knife and turned my back on the assemblage.

I walked from the field slowly, giving the Duke sufficient time to send men after me. Like a dark shadow I picked my way over the ruts as droplets of water began to fall from the sky. Slowly at first the rain sank into the depleted earth and then it began to race over bare ground as the storm broke. My skirts drug in ankle deep mud as I made my way to Louise's pavilion, where a horse waited with bulging bags tied to the saddle. I slipped into the tent unnoticed, for the dozen men who followed became lost in the warren. There I exchanged gowns with a bright eyed young girl whose honey colored wig was indistinguishable from my own hair.

The adventures of our family should have shown us that plans seldom unfold the way that the are intended. The girl had been instructed to ride for the coast, allowing the men who followed to keep sight of her. A small fishing boat waited that would have taken her to Calais, where a fat purse of gold coins waited for her arrival. The confusion the girl's flight wrought would have given me time to leave the field as part of Philippe de Bourbon's party and I would reside with him for the next year.

What my sister did not foresee was the arrival of the rain, and the storm that soon became a raging tempest. The boat capsized before the horrified eyes of the soldiers and weighted down by heavy skirts the girl drowned in moments. Even her body could not be recovered for burial although the king's agents searched long, combing the sands for the remains of the girl who had broken the English king's heart.

"He wept." Louise said. "I was brought to the chapel and he was kneeling at the alter with tears running down his face. By the living God, sister, he seems to have aged twenty years."

"He blames himself for my death."

"Lucia…what have we done?" Louise sounded terrified, as though the man our actions had birthed was more to be feared than pitied.

I thought of Henry then, the laughing hunter who had followed me from the field but also the tortured prince beset by demons, who feared what he might become. A presentiment of what the years would hold for my beloved seized my throat and it was a long while before I could speak. "God forgive me, I have made a terrible mistake."

Marietta could no longer contain her anger and her voice whipped out like a lash. "But why did you leave him? He loved you!"

Sister Maria Lucia sighed. "I told myself that I left him because I would never have been his equal, and that his love for me would have faded. That morality drove me from his arms or a desire to return to the convent...All of those reasons are lies. I left him because I was a coward, and unfit to bear the Borgia name. I feared he could not love me as I loved him but seen through the prism of 60 years I know that to be false as well. He truly loved me, and if God is merciful I shall see him again in the place behind the dawn."

"If you had stayed with him..."

"With me to guide him, to be the gentle voice of reason whispering in his ear, would any of it have happened?" Sister Maria Lucia held her hands out to Marietta, palms upward. "The blood of thousands stains my hands, Marietta. Moore, Fisher, all of them died for my pride and fear.

"You know the rest of the tale, of course, how he eventually divorced Katherine and married the Boleyn girl, shaking our church to its foundations."

"Do you think he loved her?"

"Anne? Or any of the rest that came after? I know not. In many ways I think the idea of love was twisted in his mind, and it became less about giving and joy and more about possessing someone utterly. Obsession walked hand in hand with passion for Henry even in his dealings with me, but no longer did the goodness of his nature temper those destructive impulses.

"I can not pardon you for what you did to him." Marietta said.

Sister Maria Lucia nodded. "Any amount of anger you feel is but a raindrop before the ocean of regret I have felt in all the years since I left him. He is my greatest crime and deepest regret. I can only hope that God has allowed me to atone in some measure for his many sins, for which I bear great responsibility." Sister Maria fingered the cross at her neck. "That is why I am here, my young sister . When I chose to rededicate myself to Christ it was not to atone for the sins of my family, only my own and they are legion."

In the face if such palpable grief Marietta found her own anger diminished. "My apologies, sister. I grieve for him. "

"It pleases me that you should do so." Sister Maria Lucia passed the cross back to Marietta and bid her look for a small lock of bright red hair almost concealed by the other treasures in the chest. She touched it and brought the hair to brush against her cheek.

"Not long after I arrived at the home of Philippe de Bourbon I realized I was pregnant."

Author's Note- This is probably the last chapter of this for a while. I have other projects to work on but I shall return. And if anyone is curious Chris Pratt is my model for young Henry, who was very handsome and athletic until injuring his leg in a jousting accident in 1536.


	11. Chapter 11

"I was pregnant."

Marietta made no exclamation of shock at the news, only a single, deeply drawn breath. She reached for the wine with trembling fingers, and quaffed a huge swallow.

Sister Maria Lucia watched her with bright, wickedly amused eyes. "Perhaps it is best that the story of my life will be told during a single night, Sister. I would not have the sin of driving you to intemperance laid at my feet."

"If it would extend the course of your story, I would gladly acquire any number of vices," Marietta said earnestly, then hesitated. "Is there truly no hope, Sister? Having found you, I am loathe to part with your company so soon. Is there nothing that can be done? Prayers that I could offer, or medicines that would extend your days?"

"No hope, my young friend? This night is the culmination of years of hope. Death is not to be feared when you have reached my advanced age." Sister Maria Lucia clasped Marietta's arm. With her assistance, the sister sat up and gestured to the shadowed recesses of the cell.

"As my time has draws near, all those whom I love have come to see me to my final sleep. They are here, clustered about the bed." Sister Maria Lucia spread her arms wide, embracing the still, close air of the cell. "There, in the corner, my mothers stand together, the strands of their hair intertwined. Lucrezia is a beautiful girl once more, and Elizabetta holds her hand. My fathers stand guard in the shadows behind them, Cesare with his sword raised and Micheletto at his right hand. Henri has come as well, so handsome once more, and he glares at one I have not yet named. And my sister, whose death is still a wound... They are here with me again and my soul rejoices!" Sister Lucia pressed hands to her heart, tears streaming down her face. "I will be with you soon," she said, her smile brighter and more luminous than the sun as it pierces the clouds on a stormy day.

She turned to Marietta. "Dearest one, do not weep. This is not a tale of loss that I tell you, of one old woman dying. Spring always follows the darkness of winter, bringing life to a barren field. It shall be so for you, I swear it. Now stem your tears, or I shall cry as well, and let me tell you how my heart was healed."

I traveled to the home of Philippe de Bourbon after parting from Henri at the Field.

Summer had come in all its abundant glory to France, leaving it as fertile and ripe as a young virgin on the day of her wedding. Everywhere bloomed small flowers that perfumed the air with their sweetness, intoxicating to my senses, and the stalks of wheat moved together in the wind like waves tossed upon the shore.

And for all the beauty of the land, I could in no way appreciate it, or the care that my sister's lover had taken to see that the journey would prove uneventful. A gentle horse bore me down the road with the company of soldiers, and each night a small tent was erected for my comfort, guarded by the vigilant Philippe. A numbness like approaching death had stolen over my mind. I can tell you little of the journey through the mountains to Busset. Only a single conversation imprinted itself on my memory and has remained there ever afterward, for in it I began to understand the nature of men, and the man whom my sister loved.

Philippe de Bourbon treated me with a distant courtesy that only relented as we approached his home. He nudged his stallion close to my own and spoke in a low and gentle voice that ended my reverie.

"You must learn to guard yourself in sleep, my lady. You called out the English King's name."

I looked at him, so handsome upon his magnificent horse, and for the first time I bitterly envied my sister. The poison of that emotion had taken deep root in my heart and I spoke without care of the consequences. "Did my...lady tell you of my sorry adventure?"

"That you won the king's heart and then spurned him? What she did not tell me I surmised for myself, Lady."

"No doubt he has already taken another woman to bed." The words were acid on my tongue, and I thought myself brave to speak them.

Philippe glanced sidelong at me from under his eyelashes. "Truly, you are Louise's sister," he mused, and shook his head, making the waves of dark hair dance.

I brought my horse to a stop and glared at Philippe, "What do you mean?"

Philippe waved his men on. When they had reached a distance that would allow us to speak in private he turned to me with unmistakable anger flaring in his eyes.

"You believe that women are the only creatures capable of love, that because our bodies are strong that men can not fall prey to tender emotions."

His words stung, and I retorted coldly. "Do not speak to me of love, I have done with it. The love of men has brought me here, far from my home."

Philippe's face twisted with derision and I saw the muscles of his body clench, as though I were an enemy across the lines of battle. "Then do not speak to me of pain, Lady, for I think you know little of it. When I was scarcely out of long gowns, I saw a girl on the road riding with her mother. For all that she was thin as a tree branch, she blazed with life, and in her I saw a spirit more fierce than a Toledo blade. I have loved Louise from that moment, and I crafted myself into that which would appeal to her. And all it had won me is an occasional place in her bed, where I keep company with her husband and my king. I saw how the English King looked at you, Lady, as though you were a flower grown in the highest meadows, forever out of reach. Well do I know that feeling, for it has been my constant companion these last ten years. "

Compared with the selfless nature of his love, my actions seemed the petty cruelty of a spoiled child. Truly, I had not believed Henry capable of the depth of emotion our affair had roused in my breast, and it had made my leaving easier. And I had the consolation of knowing that he still lived, while Henri thought himself the instrument of my death. The tears that anger had locked away flowed, and I wept bitterly, knowing at last the extent of my crime.

Philippe watched me, and pity must have moved him to temper the harshness of his words. "My apologies, Lady. Perhaps you did rightly to leave him. You seem ill suited to remain in the shadows."

My breath found release in harsh laugh, low and rough as the stone that forms the network of crypts that lie beneath the surface of our ancient cities. I wiped the wetness from my cheeks. "How little you know of my family, sir. Borgia's were born in the shadows."

The hill that we had been climbing abruptly crested, and, spread out before me was the entirety of the valley, bisected by a winding green river. I saw the chateau from a distance , a small gray jewel surrounded by fields where men, appearing no larger than ants, tilled the soil. It was so lovely, so peaceful, that the stranglehold of my grief loosened enough for me to offer an apology.

"I spoke in anger, sir, and I beg your pardon," I told him. "Truly, you seem a man worthy of the love my sister bears you." At his startled look, I nodded, and such joy came into his face that tears threatened to spill from my eyes once more.

Philippe saw to many provisions that would ensure my comfort during my stay at his chateau, but he was called back to court, where the alliance with England against the Emperor crumbled almost as soon as the monarchs left the field. I was left in an ancient forest with only my memories to keep me company and a nagging, mysterious illness that began shortly after my arrival.

"Could you be with child, my lady?" A serving girl asked when she found me bent over, retching for the forth morning.

A child. The thought exploded with the force of a thunderclap. His child. Henri was not utterly lost to me. I cried tears of joy at the truth of it, and the bleeding scrap of my heart healed, a precious offering that I gave to the child now cradled in my womb.

Immediately, I sent word to my sister. Two fortnights later I returned to the Chateau of La Motte-Feuilly, where Louise greeted me with desperate joy. Together we rejoiced that the line of our family was to be continued, and we plotted to ensure our safety in the years ahead.

"I must return to court for a short time, sister," Louise said, holding my hand as we lay together on the bed. "so that I may be with you when your time grows near."

That my connection to the English king would never be discovered, I took the name of Anna Farnese, a cousin to the Duchess, and newly widowed. Trusted servants to the Duchess attended me, and my body bloomed like a summer rose, ripe with Henri's child.

"What is it like, sister?" Marietta asked hesitantly, unwilling to interrupt the flow of the story, but prompted by her insistent curiosity.

Sister Maria Lucia closed her eyes and smiled dreamily. Her hand moved to her stomach, concealed beneath the woolen robe.

"At first, you love the promise of the child, the idea. You speak to it always, of hopes and dreams and the life which you foresee. And then, when the child moves, you love it as something separate from yourself.

"There are many kinds of love, my young sister. The love of God, the love which we have for our mother and father, the burning love which I felt for Henri. Far greater than any of these is the love of a mother for her child. I would have sacrificed anything for the happiness of those I love, but for my child I would have offered up my still beating heart, and counted it a good bargain."

The house the Duchess gifted to me was a solid stone building that lay just outside the walled confines of her chateau. Spiders preformed dances from the top rafters and webs formed delicate tapestries that blew in the late summer wind. From the topmost window of the house I could see the road that lead North, away from France and across the water to where my beloved thought me dead. A thousand times or more I dreamed of joining him, and raising the child we had created together, but those dreams proved no more substantial than the dried husks of insects trapped by the glass within sight of the sky.

Fall came, and I watched from my window as showers of gold and orange leaves fell, burying the road in the brilliant colors of a dying forest.

It was the russet hair of the rider that first caught my attention from where I lay in my cocoon, watching the passage of time. Two figures, a darkly veiled woman and the slim, upright figure of a youth with hair the flaming red of a sunset.

My heart leapt in my throat watching them ride closer, for even from a great distance the young boy had the agile grace of one skilled with the blade, and the bright hair of my father. I leapt up and ran to them.

I should have known to temper my enthusiasm for greeting, for no sooner had I crossed the gate and raised my hand then a veil was placed before me, and I fell into the warm embrace of darkness. Angry shouts pulled me from sleep, and I opened my eyes to see Betta, my mother, who held me in her arms as though I were a child, while my brother Nico kept the angry, milling servants at bay with a sword.

"How…?" I asked, thinking that the sudden appearance of my mother and brother must be a vision born of my deepest desires.

"The Duchess sent for us," my mother crooned, and she placed her hand atop the mound of my stomach. Her eyes, dark as the evening sky, brimmed with tears, and I saw that the light dimmed by Micheletto's death had been rekindled with joy.

Sister Maria Lucia smiled, and again Marietta saw the echoes of beauty lighten her features.

"That I may finish the story in the time allotted to me, I shall offer few details of the duration of my pregnancy, for in truth, one is very like the next. My mother tended to me ceaselessly during the remaining months, when I swelled like a sea creature cast up upon the land. When the snows melted, my sister returned to the chateau. There, when the first spring flowers had begun to bloom, did my time come and after much travail I was delivered of a daughter, whose red hair and waving fists gave proof of her parentage. I named her Charlotte.

"The next years passed in a haze of golden sunshine, lit by the radiance of my blessed daughter's smile. Though I would have willingly carried her in my arms for years, all too soon did her feet touch the earth and then she became a whirlwind of laughter and dazzling brightness."

"Was she a biddable child?" Marietta asked.

Sister Maria Lucia chuckled. "The child bred of the Tudor and Borgia lines? Charlotte was like Lucifer before the fall, proud and angry and more radiant than the evening star. Red hair fell in a curtain to her waist before her fifth birthday and it would fly about no matter my efforts to constrain it. It was in that year that a nobleman who had been at the Field paid an unexpected visit to my sister while I waited in attendance on her. In that man's eyes I saw the light of recognition when my daughter ran through the hall to greet me. Charlotte was unmistakable with her red hair and vivid Tudor face, and I the woman who had shared the king's bed.

"Before another month had passed we were bound for Spain. My sister had received word that the courtier who had spied Charlotte was seen in the company of the English Ambassador. Nico, who had been in the service of Philippe, came as well, though my mother decided to return to Grosetto and live out her remaining years close to my father. I do not know the year of her death. Micheletto taught her to slip so cunningly through the shadows that perhaps, in the end, she surprised death, and went to my father's side in her own time.

"Louise had maintained a correspondence with our Borgia cousins in Spain, and her generosity ensued that we were received honorably by Juan Borja, the youngest son of Juan Llancol Borja, my great uncle.

Sister Maria Lucia chuckled huskily, and color touched her withered cheeks. "Juan...at first I hated him, the man clad in rough leathers who wore my father Cesare's beautiful face. And then I loved him for so long and so well that the strands of our souls became intertwined. Place the emerald ring in my hand, Sister, and I will tell you how, during our first meeting, I slapped the face of the man who would become my husband."


	12. Chapter 12

"I slapped the face of the man who would become my husband."

Marietta leaned forward, anxious to hear the nun's account of the love which still flared bright in her eyes.

Valencia! The music of that place still echoes in my ears. The songs of the Moors could be heard in the voices raised in the alleys at night and the dusky, rich skin of its people. It was a city of white stone set next to the intoxicating blue of the water, scented with the aroma of orange blossoms and jasmine, stronger even then the unpleasant aroma that clings to all cities. Though I had loved Grosetto, no place ever suited me so well as Valencia, the birthplace of my family.

The Borjas had grown very wealthy during the papacies of Calixtus III and my grandfather, and the golden bull of my family crest occupied a place of honor there. We arrived shortly after the end of a civil war, when the artisan guilds revolted and sought to establish a separate principality. From atop the white walls of the city still hung the tattered remains of those executed Germanies.

Plague had also left its mark on the city and its inhabitants, who saw each day of survival as an excuse for revelry. Nico, Charlotte and I left the ship that had transported us across the sea and although we had expected to be greeted by our cousin, no one could be found. I left my daughter with servants and went with my brother in search of our family.

"I seek Juan Borja," I told the crowd of drunken men surrounding the harbor, armored in my veil and a haughty mien.

A man stood, taller than the rest. The scent of alcohol rose in a great cloud from him, and his voice slurred. "I am Juan Borja," he said, then surveyed my body with lascivious interest.

With a start I realized that the man before me resembled, to a remarkable degree, my father and mother. His face, with its fine boned features and beautifully cut mouth, bore a striking similarity to my own, though his dusky skin wore the mark of the hot Valencian sun. Only his long silky raven hair set him apart.

Juan Borja saw the resemblance as well, and surprise tore through the intoxicated haze. From his vastly superior he perused my face. He cupped my chin, and stooped as though to kiss me in greeting.

The resounding slap I delivered made him stagger back. Jeers rose up from the men, and Juan flushed. He took my arm roughly, only stopping when he felt the edge of a blade I had pressed against his wrist. With a tiny shake of my head I warned him to loose me, and he obliged.

"I am Lucia de Corella, cousin to The Duchess of Valentinois, who sends you her greetings."

Horror replaced Juan's anger, and he made sincere apologies that did nothing to quell my anger. It seemed a travesty that this distant cousin should have stolen my father's beautiful face and ravished it with debauchery. I surveyed him coldly, making no effort to conceal my contempt, and he wilted.

"And why did you not protect your lady?" Juan asked Nico as we made our way through the crowed streets to his home, a large and elegant building that enclosed a lush terrace scented with jasmine and honey.

"My sister…," Nico mocked him, "is capable of defending herself from drunken fools."

I saw scarlet flood his cheeks, but he did not apologize again. Instead a mask of cool civility settled over his face which only lessened when I brought my daughter forward.

Never had there been a lovelier child than Charlotte at that age. Her face was a study in contrasts: milky white of skin and fiery red of hair, with eyes that burned blue flame, like her father's. Charlotte greeted him in the tongue of Valencia, for she had the gift of languages, and from that moment on, his heart was hers. An hour later they could be seen strolling through the garden hand in hand, a worshipful light in his golden eyes.

Time proved my first impression of Juan Borja to be gravely in error. He was not the drunken fool I took him to be, merely a man who occasionally found consolation for the deaths of his wife and son in the bottle. He traded in silk, like many in that city, and managed a flourishing empire that lined his coffers with gold.

Although I requested that he find me a home apart from his own, the recent turmoil in the city made that unwise. We were lodged in the quarters that had once been his wife's, and showered with every luxury.

It came upon me gradually, the knowledge that our host watched me, following my every movement with eyes that could not hide his desire. And though I professed to be unmoved and treated him coldly, his was the face that began to haunt my dreams, reminding me of the delights to be found in a man's arms. The sun drenched scent of his skin followed me from room to room, and during the heat of the day his linen shirt would cling to his muscular frame. Heavy stubble sheathed his jaw by the time of our evening meal, making my fingers itch to discover the texture of soft skin roughened by dark hair.

I had been without the touch of a man for five years, and chastity is much easier to bear if you have never tasted the fruit of desire. One night I spied a couple fornicating with reckless abandon in the alley, and the sight of them sent tongues of fire racing through my body. A noise sounded on the terrace behind me, and I twirled to see Juan staring at me with naked longing. I dreamt of a man between my legs that night, and woke to realize that the incubus who graced my bed had dark hair, not reddish gold, and smelled of jasmine.

Had it merely been desire, I could have assuaged it myself, or found a lover. But Juan circled me like a skillful hunter, intent on his prey. He paid court to me with shy smiles and the happiness that my daughter found in her new home. Juan doted on Charlotte, bringing her treasures back each day from the market and taking her hand as they walked through the garden. There was a desperate longing in her for a father, and I could see in him a wish to replace the child he had lost. He hired tutors to feed her agile mind, and instructors in the arts of dancing and courtly life. He was a kind and generous man, beloved by his servants, whom he paid a fair wage, and the men who crossed the ocean at his behest.

After we had resided in his house for nearly four months, and repressed desire filled each waking moment, one of Juan's ships was spotted as it neared the harbor. A great cry went throughout the house as all hurried to meet it.

Charlotte would not rest until we joined in the throng. For many years it had been my practice to dress simply, and we blended with the rabble as we walked to the docks. Charlotte and I were jostled by merchants, street performers, and garishly painted harlots who sought to service the men newly arrived home. We were pushed next to the water, which splashed as an approaching storm battered the ship and the shore. The day was stormy with dark clouds and a wind howled through the streets.

All hands were being put to use to secure the ship to the dock before the rain came. Amidst the crowd I saw Juan, wet to the skin, glorious with his heavy muscles and poet's face. The heat of my regard must have scorched him, for his eyes lifted, meeting mine, and such was the look that passed between us that had the surrounding boats burst into flame, it would have surprised me not at all.

Cognizant of the dangerous path I trod, I decided to return home. I turned, and one of the harlots pushed rudely past me, separating my hand from that of Charlotte.

"Mama!" she called, frantic, and a scream sounded from her lips as she was pushed too near the water.

"Lotte!"I screamed, and in the moment it took to reach my daggers, I heard the unmistakable sound of a small child falling into the water.

I slashed wildly with my knives, and a path was cleared that brought me to where my daughter had stood only a moment before. The brown wool of her gown weighted her down like stone, and I saw only the merest glimpse of red hair as it disappeared through the waves. Charlotte, like myself, could not swim.

My feet prepared to leap from the dock after my daughter when strong hands seized my arms. One of Juan's servants pointed, and I saw a figure slice through the water like a fish.

No breath escaped my lungs as I waited for them to emerge. When I had just determined to join my daughter in her watery grave, a dark head emerged, slick as a seal, and in his arms was the still form of Charlotte.

Hands pulled them up, and from Charlotte's blue lips there emerged no breath. Juan crouched and pushed her to the side and pounded on her back until a great quantity of sea water was expelled from her lungs, followed by a piercing cry.

The storm that had threatened finally broke, and the crowd scattered as the heavens let loose a torrent of rain. Juan lifted Charlotte and strode to the ship, and my daughter was laid on the narrow bed in the captain's chamber.

Lengths of precious silk were stored even there, and their jewel tones cast color on the white skin of my daughter. She coughed and retched for a while and then fell into an exhausted slumber, and her pallor was gradually replaced by ivory and rose, and her chest rose and fell naturally.

"There is no more danger," Juan whispered. We were crouched together next to the bed, each holding a delicate hands. Their fingers seemed so long and elegant, the hands of a skeleton. An abrupt realization of my daughter's near death crashed over me, and I collapsed to the floor, too scared even for tears.

Juan gently removed his hand from Charlotte's grasp and pulled me to my feet. We embraced, clutching each other tightly, until our harsh breathes eased, fear gradually replaced by another emotion.

My hands found the place where his shirt gapped from his breeches and I stroked his skin, the narrow muscles of his waist and then moving to his back. Leashed power and boiling emotion radiated from his still frame

"Lucia," he whispered, and I stopped whatever words he would have said with my lips.

To kiss Juan was to find my home after years of wandering through the world alone. I tasted the salt and my fingers delved through the wet strands of his dark hair as he pressed my back against the sloping walls of the cabin.

Time passed in an agony of acute desire, and when he retreated from the warm confines of my mouth it was to find that our labored breathing had returned, made harsh with longing.

"If you would have me go, tell me at once," he growled, and moved his hips so that I could feel the strength of him rising between us.

I answered him not with words. My fingers found the pins that held my matronly veil in place. With a metallic clink they fell to the floor, and I pulled my hair loose until it hung about my body in disordered ringlets. My legs wrapped bout his waist. He lifted me against the wall of the cabin, and I filled my mouth with the skin of his shoulder to keep from screaming at the incredible bliss of his body sheathed within my own.

We descended from the loftiest heights of passion to find ourselves sprawled upon a length of crimson silk. My head rested on the perfection of his broad shoulder and I watched with amusement as his dazed expression gradually dimmed.

"Was this recompense for saving Lotte?" he asked, vulnerability threading through his voice. I saw then how my apparent dislike had wounded him, though he covered it with a mask of cool civility.

"No,"I whispered, and began to trace my lips along the paths of his chest. I perched on top of him and bent until my breasts dangled before his rapacious mouth. His draws on the engorged tips brought forth another cascade of desire. "Perhaps this shall be for saving my daughter," I said, breathless. "Or this," as I used all my nearly forgotten skills to rouse him again.

His choked moans sounded of music to my ears, but all too soon he bid me cease, and rise up to meet him. Hands held my body aloft as his hips pounded, driving me toward another precipice. When I found my voice again I made to reassure him, for the words of Philippe de Bourbon resounded in my mind.

"It was not for saving Lotte, although I do thank you," I told him. " It was for your unfailing kindness, and for making my daughter laugh. But more than that it was for making me dream of dancing with you, and waking to feel my body trembling with longing."

His grin bared white teeth visible even in the shadowed darkness. Lazy fingers traced the marks on my back, and I felt him start in recognition of their significance. "Can you tell me of your life, Lucia? What danger haunts you?"

The sounds of the storm provided a suitable accompaniment to the story of the Field, and the love of a king, which had produced my daughter.

"Have you no sense, woman? Henry of England? Better that you should have bedded down with a viper," he scolded.

"Jealous?" I asked sweetly.

"Unbearably so," he admitted, and then smiled when a huge yawn broke from my lips. "Sleep, Lucia. I will protect you."

"I know," I said, and rolled to my side and fell into deep sleep with my head pillowed on his arm. I awoke to find that a new day had dawned. Light poured forth through the tiny window of the cabin and that the small, delicate touches along my lower back were Juan's lips, eager to begin a new day of exploration.

"What are you doing?" my daughter's piping voice called from the bed sometime later, having observed sights unsuitable for childish eyes

With a laugh Juan rolled until our naked bodies were covered by silk and the honey curls of my hair fell in a curtain over his chest. "Your mother had just agreed to wed me, child," he said.

Charlotte's face broke into a wide grin. "And you will be my father?" At his nod, her smile grew even larger, fairly splitting her face in two with joy. "This is a wonderful day," she intoned solemnly.

We wed as soon as it could be arranged. Not until then could I have imagined the joy of whispering "I love you," and knowing, with absolute certainty, that the emotion was returned tenfold. For the first time in my life I could openly bear the Borgia name, as did our son Miguel, born nine months after that heady night on the ship.

The great wheel of time had come full circle. I found happiness with a man who wore my father's face, and I the very likeness of my mother. We relived the patterns of their tempestuous love, but brought to a joyful conclusion. No longer was I the hidden Borgia bastard.

For the next five years we lived in a state of blessed peace until the return of my brother Nico, who had journeyed to New Spain, set us across the ocean on one last adventure.

"Do you hear it?" Sister Maria Lucia said, hand trembling at her throat.

"What?"

"The lark! The morning approaches!"


	13. Chapter 13

"The lark! The morning approaches!"

Sister Maria Lucia stopped the flow of her narrative. A gentle, reflexive smile moved the lines of her face into beauty once more.

"Many times in the years since then I have wished that I possessed the talents of a painter, so that I could sketch out the myriad sweet memories I have of the short term of my marriage. I would paint of it a picture, and keep it near me always, if only to assure my heart that it was not a dream. The day that Juan took me to the seashore soon after we were wed and we spent hours in the surf. He taught me to swim, and made love to me as the sun sat, turning the water into golden silk around our bodies. The day that our son was placed in Juan's arms and he wept with joy that we both lived. When the children would wake us, and we would stay in bed for hours with them and laze in the sun drenched linen of our bed clothes. The simple, quiet nights spent before the fire which seemed so hopelessly mundane at the time, but now seem to be the very essence of love, and marriage, and happiness.

Or that I had the gift of words, and could write of our love a song, or a ballad.

Marietta interrupted the nun's ruminations. "You speak too lightly of your own talents, Sister. I feel that the story of your life is more beautiful than any song that I have heard or tale that I have read."

Sister Lucia smiled her thanks and continued her story. From time to time she would look towards the small window of the cell, where unmistakable slashes of grey lit the dark of the sky. The imminent arrival of dawn seemed to cheer the nun, though she often struggled to find the breath to continue her story.

In that year I was 30 years old. Time had been kind to me and I fancy that my face still retained some of the beauty I had owned in youth. At least my husband assured me that it was so.

To understand why we left our home it is necessary to understand Spain during that turbulent age. All about us, the world was changing, power shifting like sand that is buffeted by a storm. Valencia had entered a time of darkness. The trade that had made our port one of the richest on the Mediterranean had shifted. Gold now entered Spain from across the endless ocean and Valencia was forbidden to engage in those ventures.

Merchants descended into poverty. The prosperous men who had dined with us one night were driven from town in their small clothes before a howling mob of creditors the next. Juan tried to keep his worries from affecting me, but each unprofitable voyage tore at his heart, the difficulty of letting men go when there was no work to be done. Our circumstances were reduced only slightly, but I saw how he feared for the future.

Juan felt, far more deeply than I, the dreadful press of legacy. I should have been content to remain with him in a more meager situation, and he felt the same, but our children would be those most affected by the change. Charlotte would soon be approaching marriageable age, and such was Juan's love and pride in her that he could not bear to see her humbled. And, though we never spoke of it, I felt sure that the specter of Henry Tudor watched over my husband, whispering of the glorious match that would have been hers as the daughter of a king. Miguel, my beautiful dark haired son, would not be the heir to a prosperous trading empire. Our ships were sold, one by one, and the flow of silk no longer arrived from far off lands. It was in that climate that my brother Nico arrived from his adventures in New Spain."

Marietta gasped as a thought struck her. "The Queen of England!" Her mind raced furiously. Had Lucia traveled to England with Henry, it could be Charlotte that now occupied the throne instead of Elizabeth.

"Indeed," the nun nodded. "Charlotte is a full dozen years older than that redoubtable lady. On the whole, however, I think Elizabeth has fulfilled the promise of greatness that Henri could never attain, and has become a far better ruler than any in her line. Elizabeth was able to use tragedy to hone her intellect and sharpen her ambition, while my poor Henri surrendered to his demons, and became a monster. Poor Anne. Poor Katherine. They paid dearly for my crimes."

"Did you know of his…" Marietta searched her mind for the word.

"Obsessions?" Sister Lucia suggested. "I did. I heard of his relentless pursuit of Anne, and my heart rejoiced. At last, I thought, I am free. He loves another. And then he killed her, and killed the other one, and would have killed the last wife had not death taken him and I came to understand the truth of it. It was me that he killed, each time."

"Do you think the word reached him of your survival?"

"Who can say? But let me continue my story."

Such tales as were told of New Spain! A land peopled by dark skinned men and women decked with gold. Rivers pebbled with precious stones, shells where in lay pearls of great price. A fountain was said to reside on that shore that would confer endless youth and beauty to those who drank from it's waters…"

Sister Maria Lucia broke off, and began gasping for breath. Her hands clawed at her throat, and Marietta beheld fingertips now rendered blue. She tried to give the nun more wine, but was waved off.

"I must hurry, sister. My breath fades."

When Cortez returned with his treasure, it was as if a flame was lit that engulfed the whole of our country. Young men without property no longer looked to join the king's army; they would become conquistadors, and return wealthy beyond measure. My brother Nico was one such man.

Nico, you will recall, was a full ten years younger than myself, and proficient beyond anything I could ever hope to attain in the deadly arts. The legacy of our father Micheletto lived in him, and our mother, and never had there been a man more skilled. And yet, for all his prowess, he had not lost his joyful spirit. Light lived in him, and humor, and he had an almost Borgia delight in sensual pleasures. Had my grandfather Alexander lived to see him, they would have been boon companions. Women flocked around my handsome, red headed brother, and he enjoyed them with gusto.

Nico had trained with Phillippe de Bourbon while we lived in France, and upon our marriage my husband had seen to it that he found an honorable situation in the armies of Castille. He journeyed to New Spain after the fall of the bloodthirsty Aztecas with the conquistadors and became a person of great importance. His prowess with the blade, his command of languages and strategy, set him apart from others who fought with Hernando Cortez. Some men are skilled only in the execution of war. It was not so with Nico, for his was a mind that could encompass the demands of a conquered land, and see to its governance. He was granted a great tract of land near to Cortez's own estates, within the shadow of the volcano Popocateptl and began work on a fortified estate the equal to any in Christendom.

Cortez, now the Marqués del Valle de Oaxaca, returned to Spain in the year 1530, accompanied by my brother. Nico came to our home in Valencia, full of the tales of the glories of that place, and the treasure that seemed to be waiting like ripe fruit hung from the lowest branches of a tree, ready to be plucked. Into the dusty decay of our fortune his tale shone like the purest gold. Come, he said. Sell what is left and journey with me to the new world. The castle he would build would rise up, with room for all, and our family would establish itself as the greatest yet to settle on that dark, distant soil.

It was a siren song to my husband, the fulfillment of his every wish. I knew from that first wine soaked conversation that we would join him, and in the next season we took ship and journeyed across the ocean in a tiny, leaking vessel I was certain would sink at every storm. The interminable tossing of the boat cost me the child I carried, but we arrived in good time to a tiny port surrounded on all sides by impenetrable jungles and the angry, defeated eyes of a once great race.

Nico led a group of soldiers to greet us at the beach. With red hair flowing down his shoulders and a heavy golden earring, he looked like a pirate. "Lucia, my sister!" he called, and jumped on the heaving deck of the ship. "Is that gray hair that I spy?" And he laughed, the sound like music upon the waters.

Charlotte, newly christened a woman, took one look at him and was lost. I thought it a trivial thing at the time, the slavish devotion of a girl for her handsome uncle. Experience should have shown me the error in my judgment where matters of love were concerned.

The journey through the jungle was long and arduous though we traveled on smooth roads, a remnant of the last empire. And, even now, I can scarce find the words to describe the beauties of that place. Vermillion flowers bloomed in the treetops, and animals the like of which I had never seen watched us from the woods, sinuous cats and snakes and lizards like the dragons of legend. Streams of clearest crystal water looked to be only shallow rivulets, but when the children dived in, they proved more than twenty feet deep, and they frolicked there with unrestrained joy. At times I could not resist joining them.

Have you ever pondered the different scents that speak of a land? Valencia was oranges and jasmine. Grosetto was the smell of the ocean mixed with wine and freshly baked bread. The convents were cloaked in the aroma of decay and dust, and, though I did not understand it then, unhappiness. New Spain smelled green, overwhelmingly, intoxicatingly green. The emerald green of feathers from the fantastical birds that lived there. One flew from the treetops as we journeyed to the capital and I plucked a feather that floated like a jewel to the ground. The green of mold, for in those wild forests it rained often and things rotted immediately. It was also the green of promise, new shoots from the crops being tilled by armies of the conquered. Many of the children born to small dark skinned women had the fair hair and light eyes of our people. Mestizos, these ones were called.

The city that Cortez had ordered built on the smoking ruins of the city once called Tenochtitlan smelled of smoke and blood. Later I was shown a drawing of the city as it had been before the cannons had ground it into dust during the last battle and it seemed beyond belief: temples like small mountains were tens of thousands of people were sacrificed to their gods and floating island gardens that encircled a vast lake. I walked near where their pyramid stood and it seemed to me that the restless souls with their chests split open still lingered, crying out.

At last we came to Nico's estate, and spent a happy interlude there recuperating from the journey until the duties of governance called my brother away. My husband was left in charge of the estate and the completion of the house, for Juan had a great talent for the organization of workers. We watched as huge stone walls rose up that would protect our family, and dreamed blissful daydreams of the home we would build in the years to come. This idyllic time was not to last.

"I…," The nun's voice faltered. "I can not bear to speak overmuch of Juan's death. Nico sent word that an expedition was being launched to explore the Western coast. Wild tales were circulating about a fabulous treasure and Juan wished to join them. He would return with jewels fit for a queen, he teased when I begged him not to go, and a dowery for Charlotte. As he rode through the gate I called out that I loved him, and would eagerly await his return.

"I wait for it still."

Marietta thought that the sister would weep to speak of the passing of her husband, but the nun only sighed, and a look of profound sadness, far worse than mere tears, took possession of her features.

"A treasure was indeed found upon that distant shore. On a sandy beach littered with shells they found a vast trove of pearls more glorious than any yet discovered, enough to fill the hold of the ship. On the return voyage a tremendous storm tossed the ship upon the rocks. Many of the men were rescued. My husband was not.

The heart of the ocean is my lover's watery grave. I knew of his death long before word was brought to me, for I dreamed of the storm, and saw him clasp the necklace of pearls he had brought for me to his chest as he was pulled beneath the water. His waits for me there, and I think that seaweed has formed a crown around his head, and his body is bedecked with the gold and gems he would have offered to me. He never did understand that the most precious jewel in all the world was his heart, which I already possessed in full measure.

Word was eventually sent of Juan's death, and I descended into a deep well of emotion where no light and no joy entered my heart. I wandered from room to room, searching for that I had lost. Lacking another course, I began riding each day for long hours, deviling the men that Nico sent to guard me.

My journeys took me far afield, until one day I came to a rise that commanded a sweeping view of the entire valley. The horse had gone lame, but some impulse led me to climb the hill. A peasant in a white mantle saw to the animal and I walked, weaving through the scrub brush like a woman possessed by demons, hair unbound from my widow's veil and hands shaped into claws, frantically grasping for that which they would never hold again. My garments were unsuitable for such exertions, and when I had reached the summit my feet felt as though they had been pierced by thorns.

As I walked upon the rocky hill the blood from my punctured feet began to litter the ground with small droplets, red upon the dusty stone. Where the droplets sank into the earth tendrils of green began to emerge. Before my eyes the path became covered with the pink roses of Castile, the flowers of my youth. The aroma of sanctity permeated the air, spicy and sweet like the memories of a simpler, when I still believed in the goodness of God.

"No," I said, and I would not look upon the radiance that I could see encroaching on my field of vision. "No."

Her voice was that of a very young girl. "Lucia," she beckoned. The voice grew closer until to avoid the sight I cast my eyes directly down and pressed my face into the dirt. Still she came closer. Her feet, only inches from the spreading misery of my gown, were unexpectedly common, covered with a layer of dust and possessing stubby toes. "Lucia."

"No," I said, and the words began to spill from me. "Has it all been for this? To bring me here? I refuse it, I will not be your instrument."

Marietta knew that she was only seconds away from fainting. It could not be true. The woman revered by all as a living saint could not have denied a holy visitation. She crossed herself and reached for the rosary concealed in her robes.

"I had come to this hill to die. The knives had been concealed in my dress all the while, sharpened only that morning. Despite my intention to commit that most heinous of acts, I felt only love emanating from the apparition before me. Such painful, all encompassing love that I understood that pain could sometimes be the purest distillation of love, like a strong spirit refined again and again until it burns, and yet we drink, if only to know that we are alive. The knowledge made the tears come at last and I found the courage to look upon the image of the mother of Jesus.

Her face was my face, and my mothers, and a small dark haired woman with kind eyes. She passed her hand above my bowed head and I felt, with utter clarity, the presence of those I loved gathered about me. Though like a petulant youth I had rejected her, still she sought to comfort me. Her love was like that I bore for my children: painful, aching, full of disappointments and yet so deep and true that even the depths of the ocean were nothing by comparison.

In her presence I found peace. In the fifty years since I climbed that hill I have sinned, I have struggled, and I have railed against the injustice of my fate, but never, for a moment, has the knowledge of God's blessing departed from my mind. I would have cried out my thanks to her, but she had gone. Only the roses lingered, and I spent hours upon my knees in prayer among them.

I gathered handfuls of the flowers and returned to my horse at the base of the hill. The man who tended to my animal also climbed that hill the same day, and was gifted with a Holy Sign upon the white of his cloak. I can only rejoice that she found so worthy an instrument for her message of hope and love.

The vision of Mary gave me the courage to continue living. My time of mourning became a year, and then five. I found solace in the rearing of my children and the tending of Nico's estate. Miguel was my quiet shadow at mass: a devout, sweet natured boy whose rich voice sounded very much like my own. Charlotte was passion and beauty, a spirit unable to be tamed. At fifteen there had never been a girl so lovely, with the perfect blending of my features and her father's vivid coloring.

We celebrated the Feast of St. James each year at the estate with feasts and a bonfire. Nico had returned after many months away and found that my daughter, ever a wild haired savage, had reached the pinnacle of womanly beauty in his absence. And having seen her, he could not look away. He watched as my Charlotte threw off her heavy quilted jacket and danced to the music around the fire, the wild song of the mountains in that blood stained land. Without a thought he moved to partner her, his body the perfect foil to her graceful movements. I saw the moment it happened, the flare of passion lit in his eyes that was echoed by her.

Nothing that happened in that house escaped my notice, not even the bower they made in the topmost tower, where my daughter's virgin blood was spilt.

When Nico came to me later, trembling and ashamed, I could not help but tease him for although we shared no blood, he was my brother.

"How our mother and father would rejoice to know with what careful attention you have watched over your widowed sister and her children," I said before he could confess his crime.

Nico mumbled, and a ruby flush creeped over his cheeks. He was then 26 years old, the very image of our father with his red hair and dark eyes.

"Do you think they watch over us even now, Nico? Do they see all that you have wrought? And my poor Juan as well, " I said from beneath my veil, glad that it disguised my twitching lips. He looked as though he wished to be swallowed, boiled, or drowned. At last I ceased my torment.

"Nothing would give me greater pleasure than the union of our lines, Nico. I rejoice that my daughter has found so worthy a match."

We embraced, and I felt the beneficent spirits of my family smile in approval.

"Touch her again before you are wed," I added, injecting steel into my tone, "And I will emasculate you."

They were married in the church built upon the ruins of that horrible temple and although I cried, they were tears of joy.

And the great wheels of time began to turn more rapidly as I aged, welcoming my first grandchild, a son they christened Alejandro and then another, a girl called Maria. Their estates flourished, and they were made wealthy beyond measure. I was able to fade slowly into old age, content with my memories of the past while I watched the slow unfurling of the beautiful rose that was my family. Miguel journeyed to Castille when he reached the age of manhood and became a priest. He serves the Pope even now, and has risen high in the hierarchy of our faith and a kinder, more worthy man to wear the purple could not be found.

My own heart was ready for one last journey. After many months of quiet reflection, I decided to cross the ocean and resume the holy office that had been the original course of my life. The solitude of the convent called to me like a mother wailing for a lost child, and at last I was ready to hear her entreaties.

In that year I discovered that Maria, only recently entered into womanhood, had become hopelessly enamored of a Mestizo boy who lived on the estate. The boy who had captured her heart was such a beautiful creature, so lofty in his bearing and clever, that I championed their cause, but before I could bring any pressure to bear on my family the young man died of the pox, a common affliction in those days. Maria had been a sweet natured child, devout and cheerful, with a laugh like water cascading down a rocky stream. The boy's death broke her spirit, and never did I hear her laugh again.

The prospect of a marriage between their daughter and a Mestizo had horrified Nico and Charlotte so greatly that they asked that I take young Maria with me, and see to her suitable marriage in the land of our birth. And so, after many tears of farewell, I set sail across the ocean. I brought a great quantity of gold that saw to my acceptance in a convent and left the remainder with my cousins to be used for Maria's dowery. She wed a cousin of the d'Este, and I thought her content, though the veil of sadness never lifted from her eyes.

I surrendered myself to the life of a nun and waited for the time that my long penance would end.

"What cousin of the d'Este did she marry? Perhaps she is some relation of my father!" Marietta interjected, delighted.

Sister Maria Lucia looked at her with a gentle smile curving her lips and eyes that did not waver until the light of understanding flared in Marietta's eyes. Tears started, first in a gathering, then in a great flood as Marietta wept with joy.

"My mother?"

"Yes, dear child," Sister Lucia murmured, and wiped the tears streaming down the younger woman's face. "Why do you think I sent for you this night of all nights? Had you seemed content, I would have left you in peace, and died without the truth of it crossing my lips."

Marietta was still beyond speech. She fell to the floor and placed her head upon the cot and surrendered herself to great, heaving sobs. Sister Maria Lucia stroked her shorn hair and murmured soothing endearments until Marietta had recovered herself.

"Why did you not tell me sooner?" she asked, hurt unmistakable in her tremulous voice.

"Although word was brought to me of your identity many weeks past, I did not know for certain until I saw the rosary you now carry, the last gift I gave to that lovely child. I had thought we would have more time…but no matter. Dry your tears, child, for there is one final tale that needs told.

The course of my life was set many years ago by my mother, who offered me the greatest gift that one can give another: the privilege of choosing my own destiny. My life has been filled with many moments of joy and many moments of profound sorrow, as the prophet foretold, but it has been my life, each moment springing out from the road that I set my foot upon. As a last gift, a parting memento, I will offer you the same gift that Lucrezia Borgia gave to me. If it is your wish, you may remain safe behind these walls in the service of God. It is an honorable path, my child, and one that I found profound joy in. Should it not be your desire, however, I have made arrangements for you to leave, and begin a new life."

"How?" Marietta croaked.

"Before I sent for you I had a private audience with the abbess of this convent who, like many women enclosed, has been unable to relinquish her love of earthly possessions. I offered up the cross of Henry Tudor should she allow you to slip out of the gate this night. She agreed, and even now I can see the lamp held by the servant who can escort you from here."

"I may go? To wherever I wish?"

"Yes," the nun said. "To Valencia, where an honorable place can be made for you among the Borja family that remains. Or across the ocean you may fly, like a bird freed from a cage. My Charlotte lives yet. Bring her the box, and the tale I have spun for you these hours, and the world shall be laid at your feet, to do with as you wish."

"I would go to New Spain," Marietta said, hope and joy ringing through her voice like the calls of birds now heralding the dawn.

Sister Maria Lucia smiled, and reached into her robes for the gilded key she wore around her neck. She pressed it into Marietta's hand. When she spoke again, her voice was fainter than the dry rustlings of leaves as they fell from the trees. Her skin had become papery, tinged with blue and purple, and Marietta saw that her death was at hand."Remove the cross and the rings of my father and mother."

Marietta removed the items. "Would you have Juan's ring?"

"No, child," Lucia said gently, and tapped the place where her heart beat with ever fainter rhythm. "He is here. The ring is my gift to you."

Marietta placed the pearl rings of the Borgia siblings in the nun's hands. After a final caress she slipped them into the confines of her robe.

"Place the cross in the hands of the abbess, and she shall allow you to pass."

With a nod, Marietta slipped the cross of Henry Tudor into her robes.

"Our time is at an end, Marietta. One last thing would I charge you before my final rest. Each of us has our own story to tell. I have told mine, not just for the passage of time on this night of all nights. It is my wish that you learn from my mistakes and struggles. Live richly, Marietta, and love as deeply as I have loved, and you shall face the end of your life with few regrets. Go now, my child, for I see the rosy fingers of dawn advancing upon the horizon. Do not wait for me to pass. Take my love, and my blessing, and go. Godspeed, my dear. "

"Godspeed, great-grandmother," Marietta leaned over the tiny figure in the bed and placed a gentle kiss upon her lips.

Epilogue

I disobeyed the last words of my great grandmother, Lucia Corella Borgia de Borja, the Holy Sister. Although she bid me fly, I remained at her side until the last breath crossed her lips, and was expelled on a sigh into infinity

Nothing could I see if I looked at her corpse, so tiny upon the bed. But when I opened my eyes slightly from the prayers I offered for the repose of her soul, there appeared the unmistakable visage of a golden haired girl rising from the still form of the ancient nun. Her hand passed lovingly over my cheek in a caress before she was engulfed by those who had surrounded her. I saw beautiful men and women, dark haired and light, embrace her. And then, in a haze of golden light they disappeared together, where I do not know.

The cross of Henry Tudor allowed me exit the convent, and I found the man who would escort me to Valencia. We made a single stop on the journey, to the humble cottage of a baker's son, where I found the man I loved still pining for me. As we waited to be married, tales were already beginning to spread of miracles credited to the intercession of the Holy Sister newly dead in Ferrara. Saint Lucia the blessed, she was beginning to be called, the protector of the innocent.

All of these things I have written in the weeks of crossing the ocean, bound for New Spain. No more shall I write, for this had been the tale of a life that had passed. Now it shall now be the tale of my own destiny I write upon the sand.

Dear friends, thank you so much for following along with the adventures of Betta and Micheletto, Lucia, Cesare and Lucrezia. If, in some small way, they have come as alive for you as they are for me, then I have succeeded. Writing these two series has taught me so much, and I am forever grateful to you.


	14. Post Script- Nico and Charlotte

From the shadowed corner of the courtyard, Nico de Corella watched the festivities for the feast of St. James unfold. A bonfire sent flaming sparks into the night sky, and long tables groaned under the weight of the foodstuffs prepared. The aroma of swine roasting, its skin rubbed with spices and oil, had filled the courtyard throughout the day, tempting even his appetite. Tankards of beer and goblets of wine had rendered the assembled crowd joyful and boisterous. Shallow bowls of pulque were passed around by the servants, who had lost their customarily docile manner under the influence of strong drink.

The amount that the servants were imbibing concerned Nico, and he resolved to watch carefully, less some mischief ensure. Though disease and war had decimated the once mighty Aztecas, they still outnumbered the conquerors by many thousand to one. Insurrection would damn them all.

He had returned only days before from such a conflict. The leader of one of the tribes had surprised a shipment of weapons bound for the new capital and had armed his men, intent upon the shedding of Spanish blood. Knowing what was at stake, Cortez had assembled his armies and moved against them.

Cortez wished to impart a lesson to the conquered, and made no effort to restrain the brutality of his forces. It had been slaughter.

The memories of that last battle haunted him. At each moment not occupied by some task he saw the relentless march of death, the waste of so many lives. Warriors had met their end clothed in the costumes of their ancestors, fur and feathers and fantastical helmets, obsidian blades raised high in exultation. The women had crouched over their children and begged, pock marked faces like open wounds as they died.

Nico had killed until his hands felt naked without the rust stain of dried blood. His sword ranged across the battlefield,leaving a legion of dead in its wake. And his mind had been separate, observing the work of his hands as though they were the deeds of another, all the while praying that some foe would rise and meet his sword and bring him the peaceful oblivion he had dealt to so many.

"My lord, come and drink with us!" one of the captains called from the crowd, a tall, swarthy man named Alfonso. His eyes glittered with the effects of too much wine and the high spirits of a successful campaign.

Nico shook his head, and knowing the black humor that had effected him of late, the men returned to their previous sport: watching the collection of young women who moved about the torches. One figure, taller than her fellows with hair of gleaming red, seemed the object of every man's eyes, but Nico studiously avoided glancing in her direction. Her beauty was a trap that he had been avoiding for years.

Across the courtyard, he caught a glimpse of a black-clad figure. Lucia. She must have felt the weight of his intense stare, for she turned. Seeing him, she lifted a hand and smiled. Her gold flecked eyes did not dim to see him, the instrument of her beloved husband's death. She did not blame him. It was enough that he blamed himself. Come, he had said, seeing in his gathered family an end to his loneliness. And they had come, crossing the ocean in a journey few dared, only to have Juan Borja meet his watery end a season later in an expedition he had organized.

Nico flexed his hand on the pommel of his sword and examined the play of light across his knuckles, which rendered the raised scar more prominent. War and the dealing of death was his genius but he had lost his taste for it. The number of souls sent to their final reward by his hand had become too numerous to count.

Most men remembered their first kill. It was the secret wound never spoken of, the first extinguishing of God's light in a man's eyes. He had no such memory. They had ridden through the night, he and his father, in a desperate race to save Lucia from the pyre. Seeing an old man and a young boy on the road at night, a host of robbers had attacked, gaunt faces demonic in the moonlight. The training his father had taken such care to instill guided his hands, and the first gush of blood over his knuckles as he stabbed a man low in the back blended into the next and then the next. They crumpled like stalks of grain felled by a scythe. Seeing the bodies scattered around his son, Micheletto de Corella had laughed until tears gathered in his midnight eyes.

"By God, boy, I would that my master had lived to behold you." It was the highest praise his father could offer.

Nico took his goblet and made his way across the crowd of men. He sat next to Fernando Avila, the man who had served as his second since they had first come to New Spain. In his quiet corner near the gate they were apart from the others, and able to converse without interruption.

"How fairs it with you, my friend?" he asked.

Teeth showed in a white smile at odds with the bandage that wrapped his eyes. "Well, sir, except for my bastard of a commander. He has not seen fit to speak to me this day."

Nico chuckled, and caught the other man's hand and squeezed until the bones rubbed together. "Peace, my friend. We shall leave within the week to see you to the coast. Your wife shall be cursing you roundly before another season has past."

Fernando nodded and brought the wine to his lips. He misjudged the distance, and the wine trickled from the corner near his mouth. The healer who had tended to his friend believed some sight would eventually return to one eye; the other had been torn from its socket by an enraged Indian who had witnessed his world crumbling to dust.

Turning from the pitiful sight, Nico signaled to one of the women. He raised a silver coin and cast his eyes at the wounded man.

The woman, heavy breasted and ripe as Fernando preferred, glided to them and ran her fingers over the exposed skin of Fernando's neck. "May I attend you, Sir?" she breathed in his ear, pressing her bosom against his arm.

With a rakish grin, Fernando pulled her into his lap and began shifting through her skirts. "Go and find yourself a woman, Nico," he said before pressing his bandaged face into the heaving mounds, "and perhaps you shall sleep tonight."

Nico doubted it, though knowing that his friend had found a warm and comfortable place to ease his suffering lifted his spirits. He returned to the shadowed corner and watched his men as they ate, the women as they flirted, and the children who ran without restraint through the teaming mass.

He should have known that this crisis of conscience would arrive eventually. He had reached the fruition of his military ambitions and been granted a vast estate only to find that it tasted of ashes in his mouth. With a sigh he thought of his mother, Elizabetta, whose strong, reassuring presence had been the unmovable foundation of his childhood. She had seen his internal conflict and sought to warn him of it.

They had spoken at great length before she had returned to Grosetto to spend her remaining years. In a conversation that had taken an entire night she had recounted the whole of her history for the first time, filling with vibrant color the faint outlines he had pieced together from whispered conversation over the years. As the first strains of pale dawn had begun to lighten the sky his mother had knelt before him and taken his hands into hers. White had finally overtaken the dark of her hair but her eyes were unchanged: dark and brimming with intelligence.

"Nico," she said, voice hoarse from the strain of so many words, "I would charge you with one last task."

"Anything, my mother," he said, awed by her tale and the incredible bravery that she had shown.

"There are times when I see such sadness on you, my beloved son. No, do not shake your head at me," she said tartly, "For all that I am a silly old woman, I know you."

"Do you, Mother?" he asked, thinking of the thousand things he had never spoken of, the sins and lusts and bitter anger he would not impart to a twin soul.

"Yes," she said, face grave, "As I knew your father. We move in the shadows, my son. Our talents and our very natures have accustomed us to no other life. And yet, for all of that, we must never give ourselves over completely to darkness. Find a reason for the things you do, my son, a purpose. I…" and she hesitated. "I committed many sins in the name of love and loyalty, and I regret none of them. Your father as well, before he died." She touched the simple golden cross she wore at her neck, a gift, she said, from Micheletto before their marriage. "Find something that will bring hope and joy to your life, my dearest son, or else it will consume you."

He thought of her words as he watched the crowd of revelers. In an alcove near the gate a small troop of musicians struggled to make themselves heard over the shouting and laughter. At a lull in the tumultuous sound, music finally swelled forth. It was unlike any sound he had ever heard. The lute and the pipes were joined by the primal beat of a large drum, creating a harmony that seemed to echo the beat of his heart and the thrumming energy in his limbs. He had heard something like it, in the night before the battle, when the natives danced around the fire. It was, he thought, the music of a new land. Not the melodies of Spain, or the primal songs of the dark skinned conquered. Rather it was a blending of the two worlds that produced a sound at once untamed and breathtakingly lovely, like the place itself.

Eyes shining from too much pulque, two girls rushed forward and began to dance. The lighter hair and skin of the mestiza glimmered in the firelight, her bare feet raising clouds of dust that clung to her skirts. The other girl, dark and stocky, moved as though her joints were filled with oil, and from her throat emerged a long, ululating cry that rose the hairs on the back of his neck.

The music became became louder as the relentless tempo was echoed by the dancers. Hips thrusting and hands caressing the air, a crowd of women streamed forward to dance, turning the saint's feast day into a pagan festival.

Looking around, he saw that all who would be offended by the sights about to unfold had retired. His sister and young nephew, the priest and the older folk had disappeared behind stone walls that would muffle the sounds of drinking and wild fornication.

Charlotte alone remained. For hours he had resisted looking for her, trying to mitigate the effect that her dangerous beauty had on his mind. His eyes alighted on her in the act of unlacing the heavy quilted jacket she wore and handing it to a maidservant.

The leaping fire echoed the unrestrained shade of her hair, and in the depths of the inferno resided the blue flames of her eyes. Charlotte was so beautiful and passionate that she effortlessly captured every eye as she joined in the dancing. She twirled, raising her hands above her head, and the pins holding her beaded coif in place scattered. The unbound glory of her hair, reaching to her knees and swirling about her, turned Charlotte into a moving flame. She laughed, the husky, passionate laugh of a woman engaged in the act of love, and his body hardened in a great rush even as his feet crossed the distance between them.

When Charlotte saw that he approached she detached herself from the dancers. She walked toward him and her face assumed an innocent expression that fooled him not at all.

"Lotte," he growled, and caught hold of her arm.

"He speaks to me at last!" she laughed. With her close at hand, he could see past the flagrant loveliness of her hair and eyes to the delicacy of her features, which she shared with her mother. In the year he had been away, Lotte had crossed the final threshold into womanhood, and the most beautiful specimen he had ever beheld. "I had begun to think that you had forgotten my name. You have not spoken to me once since your return, most revered uncle." She lingered over the last words, tasting them with her tongue as though they were a delight to her senses.

In the face of her jibe, Nico lost the grip on his anger. He touched her dance flushed cheek and smiled. "I have not forgotten, most headstrong niece."

It was the remnants of a game they had played during a time when he was the principal architect of her mischief, teaching her to ride the huge horses that carried him to battle and instructing her in the arts of the blade. A mere 11 years separated them. In the heady, sun drenched hours of play in Valencia he had rediscovered his youth by sharing it with her, hearing her laugh as it broke upon the waves when he taught her to swim and dance and run.

"Drink," she said, holding the cup she had brought to his lips. "And dance with me, if you remember how."

"I taught you this dance," he murmured. Forgetting his melancholy, he allowed Lotte to tilt the cup, and the wine flooded over his tongue. Still meeting her intense gaze he licked his lips, capturing the last droplets of the vintage.

"It is immature, though sweet," he said, arching an eyebrow in her direction.

Lotte caught his meaning and laughed. She pressed the goblet to her own lips and drank deeply, emptying the cup. "I would say that it is full ripe, and heady." She tossed the goblet to the servant who waited behind and stepped into his embrace. She took his hands and guided them around her waist. When they were pressed together from chest to thigh she looked up and smiled again, face like a siren.

The music swelled as they entered the press of revelers. Nico could no longer distinguish the sound of the drum from his heart, beating too fast as their bodies followed the sound. They were too close. He could not stop his arousal, any more than he could control the flush that sparkled on her cheek and the rapid pulse he knew had nothing to do with the exertions of the dance and everything to do with the need that was bleeding from him into her. Firm breasts brushed against his chest and she tilted her head back, inviting him to lean in for a kiss.

Nico took her arms and lifted until her ear was a breath from his mouth. "You play at a game you do not understand," he growled,unreasonably angered by her teasing and his bodies' reaction.

"Then teach me," she breathed, and looped her arms loosely around his neck as they continued to match their steps in a dance that had become charged with tension . "As you taught me to ride upon your charger, your hand heavy across my thigh. Teach me, most revered Uncle."

Words spilled from him in a foul stream."Every man who watches you imagines himself in your bed this night. Will you give yourself to one of them, and shame our family name?" He hissed.

Rage burned scarlet in Charlotte's cheeks, abruptly dispelling the wine and passion haze. She wrenched herself from his arms and lifted her chin, uncaring of the other dancers streaming past. "How fortunate it is, then, that my father was sent to his death before he could witness it. Good night, Uncle." She made her statement a curse.

Nico flinched as her words struck at him. The rush of dancers separated them, and Nico watched as Lotte turned and stalked toward the enormous doors and wrenched them open. The darkness swallowed her.

He had not realized his intention to follow until his feet touched the smooth gray stones of the hallway. After the heady warmth of the night, the coolness of the passage restored a measure of his calm. He would follow her, he thought, to ensure that she reached her rooms unmolested. Fear quickened his steps. The remnants of his army were housed here, a ragged group of dangerous men unused to rules.

As he crossed the hall he grabbed a candle from one of the long tables and headed for the second floor, where his sister and her children made their rooms. At the landing he heard the sound of scuffling, then the loud crack of a hand on flesh.

A deep voice cursed, followed by loud jeers.

"Release me, you fools," Lotte said, her voice vibrating with anger.

The men were too far gone to pay her any mind. As Nico crested the stairs he saw them circling her, wolves ready to rend a lamb asunder. He placed the iron candle holder on the stairs and took a moment to steady himself and read his surrounding. Three men, all seasoned veterans of the last battle. Steel hissed as he withdrew his sword from the scabbard.

Intent on their victim, the men did not hear his approach. The cold kiss of a blade against a beefy neck froze the largest man in place. He dropped Lotte's arm and turned slowly to meet the furious gaze of his commander.

"If you wish to keep your head attached to your neck you will be gone from here before the dawn," Nico said, the calmness of his voice at odds with the death in his eyes.

"My lord…"

Nico did not reply, only leaned into the blade until a trickle of blood caused a spreading stain on the man's leather collar. The thought was in their eyes, he could see it, the consideration. Three of them could easily best a single man.

In a lightening movement he withdrew a dagger from his belt. Balanced lightly on his toes, Nico tracked their movements and smiled, cold as ice. "Come, then," he encouraged, motioning them forward. "My blood runs hot and I would welcome the sport."

"She is only a girl," another man said, sweat running into his eyes as he began to move away until his back pressed against the opposite wall. "No different than all the others."

Nico made a furious slash with his sword, stopping it an inch from the speaker's eye. "This girl is mine," Nico hissed. "Of my family. Leave this instant or I shall see your bodies thrown to the dogs before the morn."

The men turned white, at last remembering the unbridled ferocity of their Captain and his reputation as a swordsman without equal. Sidelong glances showed fear and hesitation and, moving as one, they backed down the stairs, keeping a watchful eye on the still figures above.

Nico did not relax his posture until he heard the muffled click of the door closing behind them. Charlotte's face was bone white and tears spilled over her cheeks.

"I thought they would kill you," she whispered. The daggers she had concealed with the fullness of her skirts clattered to the stones, and she buried her face in her hands.

Nico bent and retrieved the daggers. He could not return her to the rooms she shared with his sister that night. He could not bear to cause Lucia more pain. Hand around Charlotte's waist, he led her up the stairs to the third floor and the squat tower where he made his rooms.

It was a simple chamber, filled with light during the day from the large windows, its walls whitewashed. His wide bed lacked the elaborate hangings of his sister's room, who sought to recreate the comforts she had known in Valencia. His chamber was plain as a monk's cell, dominated by an enormous table piled high with ledgers and maps and instruments of navigation.

"Would you take wine?" he asked, keeping his voice low and gentle.

Lotte nodded, and then used the sleeve of her gown to wipe wet cheeks. "What horrible men," she whispered. "Had you not come…they meant to rape me, or any other woman they chanced upon."

"Indeed."

"How could they be so cruel?"she asked, for the first time displaying the innocence of youth, which was so at odds with her intelligence.

Nico led her to the chair placed before the banked fire and pressed the cup of wine into her hand. Moving about, he lit the brace of candles on the table, which threw scant illumination about the large room. He opened a window and from the courtyard below he could hear the sounds of revelry: laughter and music and the occasional low cry.

"It is this land, I think," he said. "It changes men into little more than beasts. Brutality is all that we remember."

"Not you, Nico," she said, lapsing into the familiar address.

"Especially me." With a sigh, he turned from the window and stalked over to the table. He unbuckled the heavy belt that housed his scabbard. Methodically he stripped off his weapons: knives concealed in each boot and secreted throughout his clothing, nearly a dozen in all, the garrote wires as each wrist, the vial of poison. "These things that we do…they change the very fabric of our nature, Lotte." He held up his hands and examined them closely, seeing the scars and callouses as though they belonged to another. "I see them covered in blood, no matter how often I wash."

"Nico…," he started to feel her gentle touch on his arm; he had not heard her approach. "You are nothing like them." She trailed her fingers down his arm to his hands, tracing each bone and sinew. Her artless touch sent a shiver of pleasure down his spine.

"Do you think not?" In truth, her presence kept the worst of his demons at bay. He chucked her under the chin and moved away, where the scent of her skin could no longer beguile him into unworthy thoughts. "But come, let us speak of other things. What is the mood here? What have you overhead?" That Lotte spoke fluent Nahuatl and several of the other Indian dialects was one of his most closely guarded secrets.

Charlotte lifted the wine to her lips and took a small, considering sip. "They are a people used to brutality. Did you know that the Aztecas made war on this place each year simply to have hostages that they would sacrifice to their gods?"

Nico nodded. "The stones of their temples were so crusted with blood that they burned."

Charlotte made a disgusted face and crossed herself. "They call us white devils and laugh at our devotion to the dead god." A teasing light came into her eyes. "Except for you, Nico. They call you the red devil, though I do not know if it is because of your hair or the legendary prowess of your…"

"Lotte!"

"Sword," Lotte finished demurely, and then could not hold in her laughter. After a moment of chagrin, Nico joined her.

"I saw you deep in conference with your mother soon after my arrival two days past. What new scheme is she devising?"

Lucia's various projects for improving the lives of his Indian subjects had become a source of great amusement. She tended to ailments, taught the youngest ones their prayers, and stood as a campion against the cruelty of his overseers in his absence.

"She has received inquires regarding my bridal portion from nearly every unmarried man in the whole of New Spain," Lotte said with an exaggerated rolling of the eyes. "She wished to know my thoughts on marriage." Her shoulders gleamed with a pearlescent light as she leaned against the table.

"From whom?" Nico said, not bothering to keep the sharpness from his voice.

"Fernando de Guzman, for one," Lotte said, eyes twinkling up at him.

"He is of an age with Cortez," Nico spluttered, "Nearly old enough to have sired your father."

"And gouty. Were I to marry him I would be forced to fluff his cushions and cosset him like a babe." She wrinkled her nose in disgust. "Pedro de Tovar."

"He drinks wine until he can not stand each night," Nico said in disgust. "His person reeks of vomit." He crossed the room and sat in the chair next to the table, close to the fire. Lotte, after a moment's hesitation, followed and sat at his feet.

"Juan Jasso."

"No," Nico said with a shudder. Unlike those who would only fall upon young boys when there were no women to be had, Juan de seemed to prefer that sport. "You are a jewel, my Lotte, and I would not see you given to one who is unworthy."

"Who would you suggest then?"

"I have given little thought to the matter. What qualities would you seek in a husband?"

"Handsome," she said, running her fingers over his hand in a rhythmic motion. "And strong. With an agile mind." She pressed a kiss into his palm. "And I would have my heart race each time he touches me."

"Can such a paragon exist?" Nico asked. He was transfixed by the play of light in the coppery mass of her hair and the feeling of her lips playing against the rough skin of his hand.

"Oh yes, he exists, though he is blind." She released his hand and rested her cheek against the leather of his breeches. The scent of her wove a spell around his senses: the faint fragrance of soap and woodsmoke, the tang of horses, and the muted delicacy of her skin, like rose petals and fresh herbs.

Succumbing at last to temptation, he turned and placed his hands around her waist and lifted her to stand close to his seated form. He pressed his forehead against the swell of flesh exposed by the low neckline of her gown and felt her heart beat with a frenzied rhythm.

"Lotte," he said, voice very low, "What you suggest is forbidden."

Lotte moved closer, skimming her fingertips across his temples and through the thickets of his hair. When he did not forbid her , she slid down and sat across his thighs, their faces now level.

"Why is it forbidden?" she asked. "We share no blood relation."

Nico started. He had not realized that she knew the truth of her mother's parentage. Still, it was only one of the impediments. "I remember your birth, Charlotte. I am too old, too scarred, to be a fit mach for you."

"In all the world I think there is no other that would suit me half so well," she said, and when he would have protested she placed her finger on his lips. "Have you ever met another woman whose mind was a match for your own? Whose humor and very nature formed a more suitable foil than mine?"

With a sigh, Nico leaned forward began to trace the faint blue lines in her throat with his breath, raising prickles of gooseflesh as his lips inadvertently brushed her skin. "I have known this for years," he admitted. Though he adored his family, Lotte had ever been the one closest to his heart, his dearest friend and secret ally against a world that too often seemed peopled with fools and scoundrels. At first it had been a blessing, the young niece who he could talk to and laugh with for hours. And then she had arrived in New Spain and looked at him with a woman's eyes and he had known it to be a curse.

"And yet still you resist."

"I try to resist surrendering to my baser instincts, though perhaps I have failed. If I truly meant to leave you untouched I would never have brought you to this chamber or allowed you to sit upon my knee."

"Nico," she whispered, eyes devoid of the usual humor and instead expressing a touching vulnerability. "I have loved you the whole of my life, since before I knew the true meaning of the word. Do not send me away to be wife to another when all that I desire is to remain here with you and call you "husband."

"Those are the only foolish words I have ever heard you utter," Nico said around a swell of emotion that closed his throat, making his voice husky.

"I am never foolish," she said, and bridged the distance between their lips.

There were no words in Nico's mind to describe the sweetness that was Charlotte's lips moving beneath his own. Sweet, like honey or morning dew that collects in the cupped petals of a flowers. Innocent as a child, and sensual as the play of oil down sun warmed flesh. That she had never been kissed before he knew with absolute certainty and yet he could not resist deepening the kiss, sliding his tongue between her lips when they opened on a gasp. And then the flavor of her captured him, sucking him into a whirlpool of need. His arms clasped tightly around her, molding her to his chest.

He drowned in her mouth, losing the cares that consumed his mind until all he could feel was the silk of her hair tangled between their bodies, her delicate bones and the scent of her, like something fresh and unspoiled in the springtime.

Some remnants of morality must have remained, for he wrenched himself back from her lips with a pained groan. Opening her eyes slowly, Charlotte smiled at him with such love and tenderness that he felt the remnants of his control slip away like leaves before an autumn breeze. When she leaned in for another kiss he stopped her with a touch.

"Lotte," he said, nuzzling her neck, trying to control his racing heart. "Are you sure? There is no return from this."

In answer Charlotte extricated herself from his arms and stood before him, a mass of tumbled hair and lips swollen from his kisses. She stripped the gown from her body slowly, allowing his clever fingers to assist her without once lowering her gaze from his intense midnight stare. The wine colored skirts of her gown puddled around her feet, the threads of embroidery glimmering weakly in the dim light.

When only her shift and stockings remained, Lotte lifted her leg and placed a leather slipper at the juncture of his thighs. Her smile and raised eyebrows communicated an unmistakable challenge.

Nico groaned low in his throat, months of celibacy now seeming a regrettable decision as he had to restrain himself from ravishing her. The placement of her foot only a thread from his codpiece had him swelling painfully, and from beneath the fabric of her shift he could see long, supple legs.

He removed her slipper and tossed it over his shoulder, where it landed among his maps and papers. "I'll not take your maidenhead tonight," he said, voice rough with need as he slipped his hand around her ankle and then slowly up her leg, learning the feel of her bones and soft skin. "No," he said when she would have protested. "We shall wed first."

"Mother watched from the hall when you led me to your room," Lotte said breathlessly as he caressed her knee and untied her garter. "Doubtless she knew what we were about and made no move to intervene."

Nico froze for an instant and then began to laugh as he drew off her stocking. Lotte placed her now naked foot on the rug and lifted the other. Instead of setting it at the juncture of his thighs, she pressed the ball of her foot on his codpiece.

Nico felt no weight or pain, only the agonizing pressure of her touching him, rousing his passions to a fever pitch. "Sweet mother of God," he groaned, and began to hastily remove her other slipper and stocking. They flew over his head and landed on the table, causing papers to scatter with wild abandon. He jerked her down and settled her legs across his thighs. When her hands moved to the laces of her shift he caught them and placed them around his neck.

"Don't," he ground out, then captured her lips in an unrestrained kiss. "We will wed," he repeated, then smoothed his hands down her throat to her breasts, which heaved with each ragged breath. He cupped them with his palms and toyed with her nipples until they rose into prominent peaks beneath the linen. "And you shall be a virgin intact. And I will love you that night until we each bleed." His lips tasted her neck around the passion-laced words.

"But for this night I will show you pleasure." He stood, wrapping her legs around his waist and striding over to the bed.

The candles had burnt low, forming puddles of wax around the hollowed base when Nico finally lifted his head from its resting place on Lotte's shoulder. He propped himself up on his elbow and looking down at her, seeking to imprint the sight on his memory forevermore.

His mind was at peace. He loved her. She was his match, his bride, the source of such unbearable tenderness that he felt tears form in his eyes. His mother had been correct. With a light in the darkness he could face the world once more.

The cream of Lotte's skin blended with the tangle of linen, and was marred in places by pink burns from his beard. The shift had been discarded eventually, torn from her body as their need to press skin upon skin overwhelmed. Her eyes were mellow with exhaustion and the trill of newly discovered ecstasy. She caught her bottom lip in her teeth and smiled impishly, tracing long scratches that spanned the length of his torso. Her fingers caught on the reddish hair that festooned his chest.

"I have added to your collection of scars, Uncle," she teased.

Nico groaned and flopped onto his belly. He buried his face in the linens and his shoulders began to shake. "What ever shall I tell my sister?" he said, laughing.

Lotte began to chuckle as well, and she moved to stretch out on top of his body as though she were a cloak. She folded her arms and rested her chin on her hands.

"You may tell her that you took her virgin daughter and spent an entire night teaching her the ways of pleasure. That there is not a place on her body that you hands have not caressed, no spot you have not kissed. That she found joy she did not know existed again and again…"

Nico rolled and pinned her beneath his weight. At the feel of him, the strong, lean muscles and coiled power, she trembled.

"I will tell her that you are mine," he said against her lips after he had bent down for another kiss. "My bride, to be blessed by God as soon as can be arranged. And after we are wed you will come with me, Lotte. To the coast, to see my friend safely home, and then to wherever our hearts desire to take us, throughout the whole of this land. They tell such stories, my love, of cities made out of gold and temples like those of ancient Egypt. We shall see them all and you shall never leave my side."

"Yes," she murmured, and her arms brought him closer until they were one flesh.

Author's note- I am thinking of another spin off featuring Nico. Let me know what you think or if you want details of my book, which will be released late September!- Bess


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